A Clear and Present Danger from the South: Part 2

In part 1 yesterday I related the history of the Mexican Expedition of 1916 and as promised, I will make it relevant. While we don't have a carbon copy of 1916 today we a have similar situation. The Government of Mexico and the drug cartels are engaged in a de facto civil war. We have this Treaty of Westphalia notion of the sovereignty of nations and internal matters. As long as what happens in Mexico stays in Mexico we have no business interfering. This breaks down when what happens in Mexico doesn't stay in Mexico and their problems become our problems. If Mexican internal strife compromises our national security we have a right to step in and at least end the threat to us.

As things unravel in Mexico we see hard gang violence spill north into the US. In southern California gangs have started to fight an insurgent campaign against police anti-gang units, even using IEDs. Mexico's problem is our problem now.

I just want to take a minute from the article to congratulate the Mexico Government for permanently end gun violence in their country by total disarmament of the populace.............. oh............. scratch that......... They say statistics don't lie but statisticians do and that's whats going on when certain politicians tell us 90% of the guns used by the cartels come from the US. Its actually more like 17%. If anything the guns flow the other way with the drugs onto our streets. Mexico doesn't have a leg to stand on whining about a few of our guns ending up there when they export huge amounts of illegal machine guns and urban terrorism to us if they won't lets us help them end the cartels.

I don't think the Mexican Government really wants our help. Currently they allow only a small number of unarmed law enforcement advisers in Mexico. We could do so much more. We could provide all kinds of logistical support, money, paramilitary training, advanced weapons and our vast electronic intelligence capability etc. We have had a lot of success sending military advisers to other cartel ridden countries. In the late 80's Pablo Escobar's narcoterrorism destroyed the ability of Colombian Government to do much of anything about him. The US sent Delta Force to create and train a special task force to shut down the Medellin Cartel. The task force hunted down and killed Escobar and dismantled his cartel, all without US personnel using their weapons.

What I am starting to get at is that if the Mexicans have lost control (they pretty much have) and are unable to bring the situation under control soon (they can't) then they need to let us help put down the cartels and end the threat to us. It won't be easy for the Government to admit to needing help from big brother but if the situation continues to get worse we will have to get involved at some point, whether the Mexican Government agrees or not. Of course, that assumes there will be a Government left at that point. At the beginning of 2009 the US State Department listed Mexico as one of the two countries most likely to undergo a revolution that year. Since then its gotten worse.

If we get to the point we have to intervene it won't matter if Mexico "allows" us to or not. History shows that America can have its way with Mexico, although sometimes we get preoccupied by other things like World War I or Iraq and Afghanistan. To recap history, in 1836 Texas became the only (future) state to have kicked a country's (Mexico) butt on their own. In 1848 Mexico made the double mistake of not only invading the US but also at the same time invading Texas (after the 1836 war and later skirmishes one would think they had learned not to mess with Texas, but apparently not.) The US went down and cleaned their clock and showed restraint, only taking Texas permanently, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Utah as well as parts of Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming. In 1914 during the Mexican Revolution Mexican forces attacked 9 US Sailors in Veracruz guarding US citizens and property. As a result, the US took the city in street to street fighting and held it for six months. In 1916 the Mexican Government was unable to stop Pancho Villa from conducting cross boarder rails and burning American towns so we sent the Army down there. We spent more time fighting the Mexican Government than chasing Pancho Villa; because apparently they didn't understand that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Nevertheless, we stayed until we entered World War I and sent the Army to France.

Am I advocating an Afghanistan-style invasion? NO. But we need to take an active role in unscrewing Mexico now so we don't have to take drastic action later. It would benefit America by curbing crime, it would benefit the Mexicans in many ways. In fact, the only people who would not benefit are the cartels. The cartels think this is a horrible idea.

Notes from our History Part 3: Avoiding Enslavement

Stripped of every civil tool the colonists turned to the one source of power the British had left them and began to outfit their militias with more firepower. Realizing what was about to happen the British sent an expeditionary force to seize the militia armories and disarm the colonists. Two lanterns in the tower of the Old North Church sent men like Paul Revere racing through the countryside shouting "The British are coming! The British are coming! To take your shot and powder!" On Lexington Green in the predawn hours of April 19th, 77 men used their last recourse to stand up to the best army in the world. The colonists saw disarmament as their last resort to ever resist the British being taken away. Other colonies realized they no longer had inalienable rights and that everything they had could be arbitrarily taken on the whim of the Crown.

I realize I have done a wholly inadequate job of conveying the panic the colonists felt in the lead up so I just want you try to look at this from their prospective. The actions of the British Government put them in such a state that they were desperately peering down the flash pans of their flintlocks looking for their last flickering glimmer of freedom. These were not destitute peasants rioting for bread to eat, like in the French Revolution for example, (Louis the XVI was arrested when a bread riot got out of hand and stormed the palace) but the upstanding and prosperous citizens of the colonies. If you think nothing like this could happen today in a constitutionally run country because now people have certain inalienable rights set forth in law, remember, so did the colonists. English law has recognised a bill of rights since the Middle Ages, longer than any other legal system.

How this applies today:
I can't stress enough that things only got violent after every other possible option was taken away. I also can't stress enough that every other option was taken away. We owe it to ourselves and to our posterity to exhaust every legal and peaceful means to rectify the sad state of affairs. That said, if what happened to the colonists ever happens to us we owe it to our posterity to not shrink from what must be done. I really really want to avoid that. Let the Government know this November that disregarding us will not be tolerated. If we don't we are risking enslavement not only for ourselves but our children.

To paraphrase Patton, "When you stick your hand into a pile of goo that a moment before was your children's children's liberty, you'll know what to do."

Napoleon, the Bastile and the Pachyderm Part 3

The colonists revolted when their fears of virtual enslavement came true in Boston in 1774 and 1775. Ironically, the efforts of the Crown to isolate the radicals in Boston from the rest of the colonies and quash rebellious sentiment had the direct effect of uniting the squabbling colonies and igniting the War. Let’s review the main reasons the American subjects felt they were being enslaved.

First, they lost the right to have a say in government. Their petitions for redress of grievances were simply ignored by Parliament and the King. This made it possible for the Government to be abusive and left no way for the colonists to try to fix the situation but violence; hence the Boston Tea Party.

Second, the Government striped several rights in response to the Boston Tea Party via the Intolerable Acts. Essentially the Crown put an end to democracy in Massachusetts with the Massachusetts Government Act. With the Administration of Justice Act they destroyed the rule of law by giving royal officials de facto immunity in all the colonies. The Boston Port Act stopped commerce in Massachusetts and threatened to create a man-made famine in the colony due to its reliance on the Port of Boston for food shipments. The Quartering Act was used as a punitive measure against the population at large, (the French pioneered this tactic against the Huguenots in the 17th century.)

Third, the Government tried to disarm the populace. Men between the ages of 17 and about 45 were required by law to serve in the militia. With their democracy and rights as Englishmen trampled all over by the Crown the colonists started stockpiling munitions in the town of Concord. Disarming a populace is one of the most important criteria to enslaving it-just ask Apartheid South Africa for one.

You can see these concerns clearly in the Bill of Rights. Right to redress grievances with the Government is in the 1st Amendment along with the right to assemble. The Government quartering troops in houses in a time of peace is prohibited under the 3rd Amendment. Right to bear arms is protected by the 2nd Amendment and to show its importance to the founders I have a quote from one of them

"Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the
peoples' liberty's teeth" - George Washington

What all of this has to do with a plaster elephant, I am sure you are wondering, is that it is important to remember why, exactly why, our forefathers uprose, what tyranny was to them. The over quoted “no taxation without representation”-which is on the DC license plates-doesn’t do a very good job of telling the story. It was not for abstract philosophical principals that the founders threw off the Crown but over a long series of abuses and ignited by specific actions to snuff out freedom in America in 1774 and 1775

It depends on if your definition of "rights" is right

During the SCOTUS case, District of Columbia v. Heller, Obama was asked at a debate what he thought about the case. He responded that he thought the court would rule in favor of an individual right but added, "But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right."

I am sorry, did I hear that correctly? State and local Governments have the power to trample over Constitutional rights? What happened to "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."? As a lawyer he should know that federal law has supremacy over state and local and the Constitution over federal.

Let's step back for a minute and make-believe we are in Obama's world, (a scary thought I know) where unalienable rights are not guarantied by law and subject to the whims of lesser courts and lawmakers.

Right to Habeas Corpus:
Lets say a locality in the south decides to restrict the right of Habeas Corpus seeing as it is such a bother to tell blacks why the are in jail.......After all, do you even need a reason to arrest blacks? Isn't their skin color reason enough?

Right to have a lawyer present during questioning:
So expensive to provide a public defender to all the poor people, especially the ones we "know" are guilty. Let's have our city "restrict" public defenders to only those we think could be innocent not those SOBs we know are guilty.

Right against unreasonable search and seizure:
Waiting to get a search warrant hampers the Sheriff's office from busting suspected meth labs. Restrict need for a search warrant in drug related cases.

Right against self-incrimination:
We have ways to make you talk...........

Right to peaceably assemble:
Let's restrict gatherings of over 30 people to social events only so my opponent can't hold rallies.

Right to petition the government for redress of grievances:
"Hey, I am getting tried of people coming into city council taking up our time whining. Let's restrict access to the meetings to only those here to compliment or bribe us."

Freedom of the press:
"Newspapers keep running negative stories on the mayor, from now on all stories must first be approved by the mayor's office before publishing."

Freedom of religion:
"Our town church is now officially the First Baptist Church of Christ. Those not attending Sunday services will be subject to a $500 fine for first offense, 30 days jail for repeat offenders."


I could go on and on but you see what I am getting at: Rights are rights and if lower courts are free to "restrict" them then where does it end and what good is the Constitution? Talk about opening Pandora's Box, the best way to go about destroying the Constitution I have heard in a while.

Or maybe I have funny ideas about the meanings of words like "Unalienable" and phrases like "Shall not be infringed."