On Cop Shootings, The Second Amendment, and Black Lives Matter

I saw the funeral procession yesterday for Officer Zamarripa.  I did not know that Saturday was the last funeral--I actually thought the funerals had finished in North Dallas and Plano on Wednesday. I was working in that area on those days and heard the road closures on the radio.  So as I headed down I-20 to Arlington yesterday I was initially stunned to see that the eastbound entrance to the freeway was again closed and that people who had parked their cars along side the highway were climbing the hill to face the freeway.

And my initial thought was irritation.  Another protest--another excuse to tie up traffic and inconvenience the populace over grievances.  But as I carefully merged into bumper to bumper traffic headed west,  I saw first the American flags of the people standing on the overpasses, and then the American flag atop the fire trucks, and then the TxDOT sign telling me that there was another Dallas Police Department funeral. 

Then I saw them--on the opposite side of the freeway.  The motorcycle procession was first--hundreds of motorcycle cops riding two abreast with their lights flashing.  Behind that were hundreds of cars of law enforcement.  Sheriffs and local police had come from as far away as Jefferson County (about 90 miles from Houston) Harris County (Houston, Texas which is about 4 hours away), Wichita Falls, Texas, San Angelo, Texas.  Last night the news reported that 300 law enforcement had come from all over the nation and from Canada to attend the last funeral of the last police officer killed in the shoot out at El Centro campus.

I have a family member working at El Centro so this shooting has touched me personally more than most. I have prayed for the families and for the wounded, but something about seeing that procession in person yesterday touched me more than any news story.   It took me an hour and 15 minutes to make a 20 minute commute, but by the time I arrived I was so moved that the time spent sitting in traffic seemed inconsequential compared to what was happening around me.

This week on Facebook and Twitter I saw a lot of posts from Black Lives Matter supporters using the argument that it may be true that all lives matter but if there are a series of houses in a neighborhood and one is on fire, you concentrate on the one that is burning down--not the others that are fine--even though in theory all houses matter equally.  From their perspective, the issues of injustice against blacks trump all other considerations.

But if you apply that logic, the people with their houses on fire right at this moment are the law enforcement.  We lost five souls on Thursday who went to work and never came home.  They were doing traffic control for a peaceful protest when a gunman ambushed them.  As I write this today, 3 more officers at least are dead in Baton Rouge.  So if the issue is imminent need, the imminent need is for safety for law enforcement since we have lost at least 8 in a week and a half.

Although it enrages BLM for anyone to say this--ALL lives matter.  A life in a uniform is not worth intrinsically less than the life of a civilian.  Wholesale war on the police is a war on the fabric of society.  It cannot be tolerated; it cannot be excused.

I don't know what the answers are.  I know what they are not.  The answer is not more gun control.  A madman in Paris just drove a truck through a crowd and killed over 80 people.  A citizen with a gun might have been able to stop him.  A citizen with a concealed carry permit DID stop a criminal armed with an AK-47 in Desoto (a suburb of Dallas) this week after the criminal robbed a business and customers patronizing the business.

The answer is not to stop freedom of assembly.  The constitution guarantees that, along with freedom of speech, and press and religion.  As long as the assembly is peaceful, citizens have a right to gather.

The answer is not to suspend the constitution.  The constitution keeps our republic functioning.

The only answer may be to return to respect for human life--a respect that all of us have long since abandoned in a society that focuses on ourselves.

And as a part of that, we have to respect the law.  We have a society where the laws apply only to some and not to all and certainly not equally.  Our society is now brazen enough that the director of the FBI had the boldness to declare that Hillary Clinton had broken scores of laws and yet she would not be prosecuted.  So we are now a nation of lawlessness and a nation of lawlessness leads to violence and totalitarianism--which is where we are headed next.

The Bible describes law enforcement as instruments of God.  Paul did not write his oft-quoted description of law enforcement to a world where law enforcement was perfect.  In fact, he wrote it to a world where law enforcement was a thoroughly corrupt arm of a thoroughly corrupt world government, yet he entreated Christians to respect the authority of police.  If  the apostle Paul, who was unjustly imprisoned for years on end, beaten repeatedly without cause, and finally executed for being a Christian, could encourage us to honor the government and its law enforcement entities, surely we living in a free nation with elected officials of our own choosing and a system of checks and balances on abuse of power can honor and respect those who maintain order in our country.

Pray for the families of the officers who died a few days ago in Dallas.  Pray for the families of those in Baton Rouge who died today.  Pray for America.  If we don't change course we won't survive.

Alexandra Swann has a master's degree in history with emphasis on the French Revolution. Her novel, The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

President Hillary Clinton in 2016 Will be Reality Unless We #FreetheDelegates.

Hillary Clinton is a human being with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Her husband was thoroughly lawless as president. Her huge achievement as Secretary of State was Libya, which culminated in our ambassador and four marines being butchered while our embassy was under attack.  She has been under FBI investigation for a year over mishandling classified information.  Now following a very public meeting between Bill Clinton and attorney general Loretta Lynch, the FBI has announced that while Clinton is actually guilty of all of the crimes of which she has been accused, she did them without intent to harm the country so therefore she will not be charged. Legal standards don't apply to her, just as they did not apply to her husband.  The Clintons are simply above the law.

None of this should surprise us.  What should surprise us is that this horrible human being is well on her way to becoming president of the United States--a feat which would have seemed impossible a year ago.  It's bad enough that we have a leading candidate so openly crooked, so completely indifferent to the rule of law, and with so many years of scandal after scandal. And it's not as if the public is unaware of her failings--she is so unpopular that Bernie Sanders, the avowed Socialist who should have been the butt of crazy old grandpa jokes everywhere won primary after primary against her.  Even the people I know who are voting for her are not really voting for HER--they are voting for the fond memory of Bill--whom they like to believe will secretly run the country from the background and return our nation to a state of economic bliss.  As one of my liberal friends explained it, "With Hillary you get Bill."She should have NO chance of winning an election as dog catcher in New York City and yet there is a high probability that she will be president of the United States.  And it's all our fault.

By "our" I do not mean #NeverTrump, of which I am a part. That movement has brought the only voice of reason to an otherwise lunatic process. I mean the American people and specifically the GOP.  The GOP started out in 2015 with a field of excellent candidates, any of which would have made a good president.  We had governors with strong executive experience.  We had moderate conservatives--like Bush--and fiery conservatives like Ted Cruz.  But instead, we gave our party over to a buffoonish con man named Donald Trump because he could get Democrat cross over votes.  Never mind that the Democrats were crossing over to vote for the ONE candidate who consistently lost to Hillary Clinton in the polls.  Never mind that Trump is the 2016 Archie Bunker--spewing crass, racist, uncouth, impolitic blather while pretending to be smarter than the rest of the world.  Never mind that, like the character of Archie Bunker created so long ago, Trump's racist, misogynistic rhetoric gave evidence to the charges that had been labeled against conservatives for 50 years--that we are in fact a party of racist bigots who hate women and people who look different from us.  Trump became the embodiment of every negative, hateful stereotype that had ever been floated about the GOP.  But he drew crowds and media attention and the promise that he could bring in a new wave of disillusioned Democrats.  And soon the GOP leadership had prostrated themselves before Agent Orange and forced all other candidates off the field.  The minions who supported Trump told us that he was tough and although terribly flawed he would make short work of the Clintons.

Well it's been two months now, and The Orange One has not done much of anything.  Many of us knew that the press would excoriate him for his past sins and misdeeds including Trump University and that was true.  Many of us suspected that he would not run an aggressive campaign. But even I am surprised that Trump is actually not campaigning at all.  He appears to be ceding the race to his long term friend Hillary by simply sitting down in the road and letting her lumber unopposed toward the presidency.

Consider this horrifying email that I received last week from a SuperPac supporting Trump: 

"Did you catch this shocking Campaign 2016 revelation on NBC's Meet the Press?

Host Chuck Todd made it all too clear during the guest panel discussion -- Crooked Hillary Clinton and her surrogates have already secured more than $43 million in television advertising during these crucial Summer weeks...

...And pointed out that ONLY ONE pro-Trump group -- including even his official campaign -- has purchased ad time to fight back: Great America PAC"

SuperPacs raise money.  But if I were in charge of the Great America PAC I would be wanting to know WHY Trump's official campaign is not purchasing ad time for TV ads.  After all, this is the man who claimed that he could self-fund the whole campaign.  This is the man who said he could sell a building in New York City if the RNC were not "nice to him."  This is the man who does not need anyone to win--not the conservatives in his party whom he disregards completely, not the RNC donors and not the RNC itself.  And this man is refusing to run.  With Hillary's RealClear Politics average 4.6% ahead of Donald Trump, we have a problem.  And no one seems to care...

Trump's refusal to compete in the general election is so blatant now that even Newt Gingrich--his early surrogate and possible VP pick, commented on it to NBC:

"Everything the Clinton campaign is doing to suppress Trump will, in the short run, suppress Trump — because he's not trying," the former speaker of the House said.

                     

"The thing she's got to worry about is if he is still alive as a candidate on the first of October," Gingrich continued.

Remember, this is Gingrich trying to put a positive spin on a hopeless situation.  If Trump is not trying now, at what point does he start trying?  During the convention?  In August?  In September?  Three weeks before election day "if he is still alive as a candidate" while early voting is taking place? That's too little way too late.  That's a sure fire formula for Hillary for President 2016 so that we can look forward at least four years of Clinton's illegal shenanigans and the continued destruction of freedom and the constitution.

It is time for the GOP to wake up from our collective self-induced coma and recognize that we have been conned.  Trump would make a terrible, lawless president in his own right, but he's never going to get that far.  He's going to sit by on the sidelines and let Clinton win.  Maybe that was the plan all along, or maybe he just never expected to get this far.  Maybe Trump is the yapping dog who chased cars until he finally caught one and now he has bitten off more than he can chew.  Either way, he lacks the honesty or the grace to bow out on his own, so we the party need to show him the door.  It is time to #FreetheDelegates.

Alexandra Swann has a master's degree in history with emphasis on the French Revolution. Her novel, The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.