“Minneapolis residents in some areas still recovering from rioting and unrest are forming community watch and security groups, some bearing firearms, to fight a surge of crime,”
reports the
Wall Street Journal.
While no one can blame the residents — in fact they should be applauded for doing what it takes to protect their own – this is, in ways I’ll explain below, not good. It is, however, a sign of things to come in countless Democrat-run cities:
In late June, residents near a commercial strip that had been looted, and the 3rd Precinct station that was abandoned and burned, were seeing a surge of shooting and drug-related crime on their block.
“It got to the point where crime had no consequences,” said Tania Rivera, 30, who runs a child-care center with her mother. “It was being done deliberately out in the open. Drive-through drug dealing, drive-through prostitution, everything from gunshots to assaults to sex out in the public. Everything you didn’t want your neighborhood to look like.”
So after a number of community meetings, neighbors began constructing a barrier to close off two blocks of their street, first with trash cans, then debris. For a while, a boat on a trailer protected one intersection. Eventually, a nearby iron maker constructed a permanent gate. Police gave their approval as long as emergency responders could get through if requested by the neighborhood.
It goes on to say that men in the neighborhood “began an armed patrol, kicking out anyone who didn’t belong on the block after dark.”
The Journal provides a number of other examples.
So what we have now, in a major America city, are desperate residents constructing barriers to keep out people who, in their opinion, do not belong…
Listen, the first, the very first priority of government is to protect our God-given rights from being violated, most especially by others. We have a God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the government has no higher purpose than to see to it those rights are not interfered with.
To say the Democrat-run city of Minneapolis is failing on this point would be an understatement.
The city, which has not had a Republican mayor in nearly 50 years, slashed the police budget and turned its police department into eunuchs who are either unable to respond due to budget cuts and ridiculous policies that make it impossible to enforce the law or are unwilling to respond for fear they will become CNNLOL’s Villain of the Day…
And now the city’s residents are forced to go to extraordinary lengths to protect their family and property.
This is no way to live.
This is why, even in the Old West, townspeople elected a sheriff.
At first, forming a local militia might sound kind of fun. Hell, at first, the coronavirus was kind of fun. We all thought we were living through a zombie movie. How cool is that? But over time, just like lockdowns and face masks, patrolling your own neighborhood is going to get old.
To begin with, how many of these people have jobs? So now, instead of enjoying their off-hours, they’re out in the streets. That is supposed to be the government’s job. The residents of Minneapolis pay taxes to avoid having to do things like patrol their own streets.
What’s more, how effective is a local militia, a local patrol? Again, once the excitement of the newness wears off, people are going to get bored, lose their lack of concentration. It’s only natural. Besides, the last people you want out there are those who want to be out there – the overeager hall monitors.
Finally, who wants to live in a city where local militias are asking if you have any business entering their streets? That is not how life in America is supposed to work.
This is all bad, very bad… Untrained citizens with firearms patrolling the streets is a terrible idea. The potential for civil rights violations, for someone getting hurt or worse needs not be pointed out.
More from the Wall Street Journal:
Council member Linea Palmisano said armed neighborhood patrols, or even efforts to just keep unfamiliar people out of a neighborhood, opens a Pandora’s box.
“We are lurching for solutions,” she said, noting she doesn’t support the idea of doing away with the police department but supports the idea of letting residents vote on it.
With the neighborhood patrols, “you could very easily create the same things we rally against,” she said.
Well, no shit, lady… But what do you expect? Do you expect people to just sit around and wait to get robbed, raped, or killed; to see their property values implode while you “rally” around your own self-righteousness?
Militia groups are a better idea than doing nothing, than the only alternative they have, which is to allow violent criminals to run rampant and to lose their life’s investment into their homes and businesses.
They have to do something; they just should not be forced to do something by a failed Democrat-run city government.
The good news is that urban Democrats are finally learning the value of the Second Amendment.
Exclusive—Rep. Louie Gohmert: Instead of Canceling Our Culture, It’s Time to #CancelDemocrats
U.S. House of Representatives
6:22
Many on the left and their willing accomplices in the media would tell you otherwise, yet a cursory examination of our nation’s factual history and records proves the riots and chaos that have swept across our country in recent months stand as a devastating reminder of the racist policies and values held by the Democratic Party throughout much of its history.
Because of this, I
introduced a
privileged resolution in the House calling upon Congress to acknowledge the indecorous history of the Democratic Party. I asked that the Speaker of the House be instructed to ban any political organization or political party that ever publicly supported slavery or the Confederate States of America.
Since George Floyd’s tragic killing on May 25, the left which includes their “mainstream” Democrats, have resurrected their push to rid our nation of any entities, symbols, or reminders of the repugnant aspects of America’s past. Statues of American leaders have been torn down, defaced, and destroyed regardless of whether they were a party to improprieties or fought against them. The liberal mob is out in full force demanding that schools, sports teams, music artists, military installations, and even food products change their names if they have the slightest reference to any persons or events deemed unacceptable and offensive to the groupthink of the Marxist left.
Democrats argue that they are compelled to take these extreme actions because of “systemic racism” in America, all while conveniently pinning blame on Republicans and conservatives. This revisionist history tells a story that simply has no basis in historical fact. Their efforts are a veiled attempt to erase the Democratic Party’s own culpability, which for decades, if not centuries, was the ardent political advocate for discrimination and racism in our nation.
For instance, when Republicans overwhelmingly supported the 14th and 15th Amendments, which recognized former slaves as citizens and granted them, as citizens, the right to vote, every single Democrat in Congress voted against their passage and, at times, blocked passage to the shame of the good done in our country’s history.
Further, as Bruce Bartlett points out in his book, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past, for a century after Reconstruction, “The Jim Crow laws were enacted by Democrat legislatures and signed into law by Democrat governors. It could not have been otherwise, since there were virtually no Republicans in positions of authority in state governments in the South after the end of Reconstruction in 1877.”
However, Democrats’ support for slavery and its subsequent support for institutionalized racism did not end in the 1800s. Elected in 1912, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson enacted policies to segregate the federal government. In a letter to editor Howard Bridgman who criticized President Wilson in his publication for his support of segregation, Democrat Wilson voiced support for his administration’s enactment of segregationist policies, stating, “I do approve of the segregation that is being attempted in several of the departments.” He went on to argue that segregation was “distinctly to the advantage” of blacks, which is, of course, an absurd claim steeped in blatant racism. When his administration began requiring that photographs be submitted with each employment application, which was used to discriminate against minority applicants, President Wilson, to whom many current Democrats either point with pride or say nothing, did nothing.
Nearly fifty years later, when Republicans steadfastly supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Democrats filibustered the bill for 75 calendar days. Republicans in Congress expended great effort to protect the basic rights promised to minorities in America by our nation’s founders. During his 14-hour speech filibustering the Civil Rights Act, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd (a known KKK recruiter) proclaimed, “Men are not created equal today, and they were not created equal in 1776. Men and races of men differ in appearance, ways, physical power, mental capacity, creativity, and vision.” This morally bankrupt view is what Democrats held for a majority of the Party’s history. That historically Democrat view is a total corruption of the Biblical view the Republican Party held, that although we may look different, we are absolutely equal in the view of our “Creator,” or “the Almighty” as Republican President Lincoln liked to say.
On June 18th of this year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered the removal of portraits from the Capitol building honoring four previous Speakers of the House—all of whom were Democrats. That was a good start on the job that she should now finish if she is going to avoid blatant hypocrisy.
Throughout America’s history, Republicans have fought to repeal Jim Crow laws, desegregate schools, and promote racial equality in America. In recent years, Republicans, including President Trump, have continued this fight by working valiantly to lift Americans of all races out of poverty through pro-growth economic policies that have done more to help the plight of the impoverished than any administration. Prior to the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment rates for minorities were at record lows with employment at record highs.
Efforts by Democrats to destroy all public traces of their own history of supporting slavery, the Confederacy, and segregation in an attempt to shift blame onto Republicans must no longer go unchallenged. It is time for Democrats to play by their own rules, and accept the standards they have forced onto everyone else. They must divest themselves of their name that has denied so many the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their recent actions demand nothing less. Instead of canceling our culture and history, it’s time to #CancelDemocrats.
Rep. Louie Gohmert represents Texas’ 1st congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives and is a senior member on the House Judiciary Committee. He is a former criminal court judge and former appellate court Chief Justice for the state of Texas.
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