Enforcing the Law, The Pledge to the Flag, Political Parties, Vigilantes and the Supreme Court All Come Together
Only a government can enforce laws when they
are violated. And that is why I hope
enough Americans vote to keep a Democratic majority in Congress, and in charge
of our government, in 2022 and 2024. I
have written elsewhere how the votes of women and people of color are crucial,
in massive numbers, to make this happen.
Be that as it may, however, a political party can
still and should rid itself of those within it who make that threat to the
nation’s commitment quoted above. It is
up to Republicans to rid their party of those who do not believe in the words
of the Pledge to the Flag. Only then can they be a legitimate opposition party
to the Democrats and deserve the opportunity to someday become the majority
party.
Here's a worthwhile and pertinent column by the
New York Times’ opinion columnist Charles Blow published last week. It recognizes that also, vigilantes have no
place in law enforcement in our democracy.
 |
| Charles Blow |
"Kyle Rittenhouse, the 18-year-old who shot and killed two men and wounded a third last year during protests of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, was found not guilty Friday of all charges by a Wisconsin jury.
One can argue about the particulars of the case, about the
strength of the defense and the ham-handedness of the prosecution, about the
outrageously unorthodox manner of the judge and the infantilizing of the
defendant. But perhaps the most problematic aspect of this case was that it
represented yet another data point in the long history of some parts of the
right valorizing white vigilantes who use violence against people of color and
their white allies.
Rittenhouse has emerged as a hero and cause célèbre on the
right, with people donating to help him make bail and one Republican strategist
telling Politico that he “could see a future in which
Rittenhouse becomes a featured speaker at the conservative confabs where
activists congregate.”
The idea of taking the law into one’s own hands not only to
protect order, but also to protect the order,
is central to the maintenance of white power and its structures. The killers of
Ahmaud Arbery on trial in Georgia are also vigilantes.
George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin
in 2012, was also a vigilante, and also embraced by the right. Money also poured
in for Zimmerman’s
defense.
In 1984, subway vigilante Bernard Goetz shot four Black teenagers who he said
were trying to rob him. He was hailed as a hero, but then more details about
him began to emerge. One of his neighbors wrote in New York magazine that he had
heard Goetz say at a community meeting that “the only way we’re going to clean
up this street is to get rid of the spics and niggers.”
This list is long, and doesn’t only include individuals, but
also organizations and entire periods of American history. I am sure that many
in the white Citizens’ Councils and the Ku Klux Klan also saw themselves as
vigilantes.
Perhaps the most prolonged period of violent white vigilantism
occurred in the decades following the Civil War, as lynchings surged.
This vigilante impulse, what some call
justice and others terror, has been a central feature of the American
experience. So has the way people have made heroes of vigilantes, encouraging,
supporting and defending them.
When Donald Trump was running for office in 2016, he
encouraged his supporters to assault rabble-rousers at his rallies while
promising, “I’ll
pay the legal fees.”
The St. Louis couple who waved
guns in front of
Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020 were invited to speak at
the Republican National Convention.
One could argue that the entire Jan. 6 insurrection was one
enormous act of vigilantism.
You could also argue that our rapidly expanding gun laws —
from stand your ground laws to laws that allow open or concealed carry —
encourage and protect vigilantes.
It goes without saying how ominous this all is for the
country. Or, to turn the argument around, how intransigent the country is on
this issue of empowering white men to become vigilantes themselves.
Black vigilantes are not celebrated, but feared, condemned and
constrained by the law.
Perhaps one of the more prominent Black groups that one could
argue had a vigilante impulse was the Black Panthers. They were seen as a
threat. As I have written before, in 1967, when the Panthers
showed up armed at the California State Legislature, a largely white place of
power, the public was aghast.
Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan said: “I don’t think that loaded guns
is the way to solve a problem that should be solved between people of good
will. And anyone who would approve of this kind of demonstration must be out of
their mind.”
The California Legislature passed, and
Reagan signed, the Mulford Act, which banned the open carry of firearms in the
state. The N.R.A. supported the measure. The bill’s author, Don Mulford, said at the time, “We’ve got to protect society from nuts
with guns.”
Whether vigilantes are viewed as radical or righteous is often
a condition of the skin they’re in.
And the verdict in the Rittenhouse case is only likely to
encourage more vigilantes, those who want to keep or impose “order,” those
irked by the idea that disorder could flow from injustice, those who don’t want
to see streets filled with people demanding equity.
The great threat, and real possibility, is that there are
other Rittenhouses out there — young men who watched this verdict and saw how
the right has embraced and celebrated a murderer, and now want to follow his
lead.
The worst thing for America would be that this case becomes
exemplar and precursor."
Charles Blow
* * * *
A few days after the Rittenhouse decision came the
conviction in Brunswick, Georgia of the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery back in
February of 2020, which showed that vigilante justice has no place in our
country. It took a better prosecutorial
team there, which originally had not been available, to successfully carry out
this fight for justice, using skills which were absent in Kenosha, Wisconsin
for the Rittenhouse prosecution.
Actually, these trials would never have had to take place.
nor the deaths which led to them, and thousands of other deaths as well, were
it not for the 2008 Supreme Court decision in D.C. vs Heller, in which the SCOTUS separated the first
thirteen words of the Second Amendment from its final fourteen words, saying that “the Amendment’s prefatory clause (in red below) announces a
purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part (in blue below), the operative clause.” This enabled the final fourteen words to stand
alone, making guns readily available to murderers.
Without
this decision, there wouldn’t be so many civilians running around the country
with guns in their hands, as was the case in Kenosha and Brunswick.
There is blood on the hands of the Court’s majority in that
decision (Justices Roberts, Alito and Thomas as well as retired Justice Kennedy
and the late Justice Antonin Scalia who wrote the Court’s opinion). Their action has made weapons available to
the killers of thousands of people since 2008. In view of this, I wonder how they can peacefully
go to sleep each night and how well Justice Scalia can even rest in his grave.
The Second Amendment in its entirety reads as follows: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to
the security of a free State,
the right of the people to
keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
You
may not be a lawyer, nor am I, but I do understand English. Read it and tell me what it means. You’ll probably get it right, as it was
intended to be read, as were Supreme Court decisions up until movement
conservatives were able to make appointments to the SCOTUS, who twisted the
meaning of the Second Amendment far beyond what it was intended to mean.
Here's a clue: Start
with the idea of a militia seeking recruits who already had weapons, because
they had none of their own with which to arm them. The Amendment was to make
sure such already armed recruits were available. It was included to satisfy Southern
slave-holding States who feared that someday, the Federal government would
attack their economic bulwark, slavery, and that is why they needed an armed
militia with which to defend "States' Rights."
JL
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More
on Cancer Centers (See prior posting)
Note: The distinction between “Cancer Centers” and “Comprehensive Cancer Centers” mentioned in this blog’s posting of Nov. 24, and which I pointed out was an oversimplification, comes from the Department of Health and Human Services’ criteria for grants for National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Centers. Its language reads as follows (highlighting added by me):
"The NCI recognizes two types of Cancer Centers:
Cancer Centers have a scientific agenda primarily focused on basic laboratory; clinical; and prevention, cancer control, and population-based science; or some combination of these areas. All areas of research are linked collaboratively. While not all basic findings require a translational endpoint, basic laboratory Centers develop linkages with other institutions that will foster application of laboratory findings for public benefit where appropriate.
Comprehensive Cancer Centers demonstrate reasonable depth and breadth of cancer research activities in each of three major areas: basic laboratory; clinical; and prevention, control and population-based science. Comprehensive Cancer Centers also have substantial transdisciplinary research that bridges these scientific areas. They are effective in serving their catchment area, as well as the broader population, through the cancer research they support. They integrate cancer training and education of biomedical researchers and community health care professionals into programmatic efforts to enhance the scientific mission and potential of the Center."
Full documentation of this source may be found at https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/par-20-043.html.
In addition, the importance of either of these NCI designations
is highlighted by the fact, according to Wikipedia, that receiving the NCI-designation places such cancer centers among
the top four percent of the approximately 1,500 cancer centers in the United
States. So, as I said in the prior posting, “There are Cancer Centers and There
are Cancer Centers.”
JL
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