Making the news is a Michigan lawmaker that brought her own militia for protection against open up the economy protesters. There is so much to unpack in this article it’s unreal. Let’s set the stage first…what would you say if a politician came to the capital with their own paramilitary army? That is something that happens in Iraq (because politicians don’t trust that the politicized police force won’t make them disappear.)
Yet that just happened in Michigan. The lawmaker Sarah Anthony claims she was frightened by white supremacists, yet given how anybody and everybody can be called that, including noted Jew Ben Shapiro and yours truly, I don’t take their word for it. Until I see evidence it’s an empty talking point, similar to her other banal talking points about how hard it is for a black woman to be elected and such. I’m sure she is suffering greatly with her nice government check, pension, and connections she is building while hard working Americans are stuck at home or thrown in jail for operating a nail salon.
Instead of going to the police, she instead arrived with her own soldiers. That may be an indictment of the police and how they are failing to protect her. But I haven’t seen any evidence of that. Instead, it seems she is taking the law into her own hands.
Of course, we believe in private militias, that is the important other clause next to the right to bear arms. But using them on state grounds to supersede available police forces seems like a militant escalation and abuse of that right. We don’t have to ask what would happen if Republicans did that. Even though liberals haven’t found a protest they don’t like, it suddenly becomes rage filled cauldrons of white supremacist hatred when Republicans do it.
To make matters worse, its all of one color led by an activist. I imagine both police and protesters are a variety of backgrounds and colors, so bringing an all minority paramilitary forces explicitly sets up an us versus them situation that wouldn’t happen if law enforcement officials were assigned to protect them. The handful of lunatics out there, (that I haven’t seen at rallies like this one), will interpret this as a provocative action. After all, how many lawmakers show up to work with their private armies? This is how race wars start and why she should trust her security to established law enforcement officials instead of her paramilitary forces.
The answer of course is to recognize the liberty of everybody, and trust in the available mechanisms of protection like capital police, detectives, and the FBI that all handle domestic lunatics and hate threats in some capacity. If she truly felt threatened, she would have emails, photos, or other credible threats she could turn over to the police for investigation. This is especially important in a country with a history of racial unrest. But turning some general unease over protests into a need for explicitly racialized protection is a needless escalation. If a white Republican law maker did that, they would be accused of bringing brown shirt thugs with them.
This shows how far some on the left go to militarize their victim hood instead of believing in the freedom to assemble and carry arms of your opponents, and that it can be done responsibly. Freedom to responsibly assemble is the whole point of the protests in the first place and this is an extreme example of how dimly some Democrats view their opponents.
