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Thread: It Is Time To End the Fixation with Federal Law Enforcement

  1. #1

    It Is Time To End the Fixation with Federal Law Enforcement

    It Is Time To End the Fixation with Federal Law Enforcement
    https://mises.org/wire/it-time-end-f...aw-enforcement
    José Niño (22 April 2022)

    Will the mainstream Right rethink federal law enforcement?

    The past six years have witnessed America enter a bizarro world state where Democrats are the prowar, prosurveillance state party, while Republicans have looked rather restrained in comparison.

    For example, Dinesh D’Souza floored onlookers in 2021 by calling for the abolition of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in one of his op-eds. In an article titled “Abolish the FBI,” D’Souza argued that the federal law enforcement agency has been “corrupted from the top,” its deterioration starting in the Obama administration and continuing apace during the Trump administration. D’Souza also contrasted the FBI’s treatment of Antifa and Black Lives Matter with that of the January 6 demonstrators. The FBI vigorously hunted the latter group while treating the aforementioned leftist groups with kid gloves.

    In fairness, D’Souza’s belief that the FBI has been recently politicized is an inaccurate depiction of the institution's controversial history. The FBI’s involvement in arresting and snooping on antiwar protesters during World War I and the Vietnam War, coupled with the controversial sieges it carried out at Ruby Ridge and Waco, showcases a longstanding track record of malfeasances that conservatives have largely overlooked. Pace D’Souza and fellow conservative commentators like Sean Hannity, the FBI’s politicization is not a recent development; it’s been a feature since its very foundation.

    Nonetheless, it’s still a significant improvement to see D’Souza—a major booster of neoconservative programs—push a proposal (FBI abolition) that has never been on the conservative menu.

    But there is still significant institutional inertia in DC and the conservative movement is ideologically committed to playing the role of progressivism driving the speed limit. All told, these factors make one justifiably skeptical of sentiments coming from the likes of D’Souza.

    The aftermath of the January 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol provided a sneak preview of what’s in store for anyone on the ostensive Right who dares to deviate from acceptable norms. In likening January 6 to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, the ruling class has laid the groundwork for a campaign to categorize broad swathes of the Right as “domestic extremists,” “terrorists,” and enemies of the state.

    There is something to be said for how an incident like January 6, especially the way the ruling class responded to it, has likely pushed significant numbers of conservatives over the edge. The allegations of abusive treatment of January 6 demonstrators who are currently imprisoned has undoubtedly tarnished the US’s image as a bastion of freedom. When countries like Belarus are offering asylum to January 6 attendees in the crosshairs of the Potomac regime, the US’s “exceptionalist” brand has to be called into question.

    Republicans are poised to retake the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms. On paper, Republicans could put forward spending proposals that downsize the FBI’s budget. These questions will soon be answered. And if history is any guide, one cannot expect much from conservatives in elected office. More often than not, grassroots voter bases are more sensible than party leadership; a dynamic that often creates a major fissure between party elites and their voters.

    Many of these people who are questioning the deep state are not by any stretch of the term right-wing extremists. They’re likely normal Republican or “realignment” voters who have grown disillusioned with the current political system. So much so that they’re beginning to rethink the very legitimacy of institutions that enjoy quasi-religious devotion from America’s bien pensants.

    In previous eras, the average American treated alphabet soup agencies as normal features of national politics. Most couldn’t even fathom the prospect of abolishing an agency like the FBI. It would almost seem like a doomsday scenario. The amusing part of such fears is that the US did not have any law enforcement body resembling the FBI for well over a century, and the sky never fell in that epoch of American history.

    Thanks to the relentless propaganda from educational institutions and the corporate press, people have been conditioned to treat the FBI as a sacred institution. Upon reviewing the FBI’s history, it functions as a blunt instrument for a ruling class that is always looking for a nail to hammer down. For anyone who believes in a society predicated on voluntary association, property rights, and the respect for privacy, the FBI is not only nonessential but also represents an existential threat to the traditional liberties that Americans champion.

    The modern conservative movement has made a litany of mistakes from cosigning on the welfare state to being enthusiastic boosters of the intelligence community and national security state. Their devotion to the status quo has blinded them to how the very monster state they support or at least tacitly accept is now being used against them. With state actors wanting to treat various factions of right-leaning Americans like Islamist insurgents in Iraq and genuine domestic terrorists, conservatives are getting a rude wake-up call about the dangers of trusting the federal behemoth.

    As they say, it’s better late than never. The more conservatives and other mainline constituencies grasp the depraved nature of the state, the more likely significant changes can be made in American politics. There exists considerable distrust toward America’s otherwise vaunted electoral institutions, as demonstrated by a 2021 Yahoo News/YouGov poll that showed two-thirds of Republicans believe the 2020 election was rigged.

    Dispensing with the many sacred cows of the managerial state is key to changing society's views of the state and moving toward a society based on subsidiarity and voluntary association. Once the luster of government agencies like the FBI is gone, ushering in substantive reforms such as defunding the FBI and outright abolishing it becomes much more feasible.



    "It Is Time To End the Fixation with Federal Law Enforcement" by José Niño is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
    Last edited by Occam's Banana; 04-22-2022 at 05:34 PM.
    The Bastiat Collection · FREE PDF · FREE EPUB · PAPER
    Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
    • "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
      -- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)
    • "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
      -- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)

    · tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ·



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  3. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post
    Praetorians gonna praetorian.

    The Praetorian Guard influenced and intervened in the imperial succession to name the new Caesar, which was a political decision that the unarmed Senate accepted, ratified, and proclaimed to the people of Rome. After the death of Sejanus, who was sacrificed for the donativum (imperial gift) promised by Tiberius, the Praetorians became exceptionally ambitious in their influence upon the politics of the Roman Empire. Either by volition or for a price, the Praetorian Guard would assassinate an emperor, bully the Praetorian prefects, or attack the Roman populace. In AD 41, conspirators from the senatorial class and from the Guard killed Emperor Caligula, his wife, and their daughter. Afterwards, the Praetorians installed Caligula's uncle Claudius upon the imperial throne of Rome, and challenged the Senate to oppose the Praetorian decision.

    In AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, after assassinating the Emperor Galba, because he did not offer them a donatium, the Praetorians gave their allegiance to Otho, whom they named as the new Caesar of Rome. To ensure the loyalty of the Praetorian Guard, Emperor Otho granted the Praetorians the right to appoint their own prefects. After defeating Otho, Vitellius disbanded the Praetorians and established a new Guard composed of sixteen cohorts. In his war against Vitellius, Vespasian relied upon the disgruntled cohorts dismissed by Emperor Vitellius, and, as Emperor Vespasian, he reduced the Praetorian Guard to nine cohorts and ensured their political loyalty by appointing his son, Titus, as prefect of the Praetorians.

    Despite their political power, the Praetorian Guard had no formal role in governing the Roman Empire. Often after an outrageous act of violence, revenge by the new ruler was forthcoming. In 193, Didius Julianus purchased the Empire from the Guard for a vast sum, when the Guard auctioned it off after killing Pertinax. [...]
    //

  4. #3

  5. #4
    $#@! the police
    It's all about taking action and not being lazy. So you do the work, whether it's fitness or whatever. It's about getting up, motivating yourself and just doing it.
    - Kim Kardashian

    Donald Trump / Crenshaw 2024!!!!

    My pronouns are he/him/his

  6. #5
    Great article! This has been obvious to me for some time. The FBI actively worked to destroy the black liberation movement from spying on leaders like MLK, Malcom X and Fred Hampton to actively participating in their murders. That's undeniable for Fred Hampton. What made Fred so dangerous? He had made an alliance with the "Young Patriots" which was the 1960s equivalent of the Tea Party. Now here's the truth about January 6th. Some of the protestors were peaceful. Some were not. That's true of BLM and antifa. Some protestors were peaceful. Some were not. Fox focuses only on the peaceful January 6th protestors. CNN focuses only on the peaceful BLM / antifa protestors. You can be made at the murder of George Floyd without burning down a police station and looting businesses. You can be angry at election fraud without smashing windows at the capital building and attempting to crawl through to get at members of congress. All of that is a distraction. Biden has done NOTHING to actually reform how the police do business. He could have gotten behind Rand Paul's "Justice For Breonna Taylor" act if he cared. He doesn't. And Trump doesn't care about election reform or the January 6th protestors. He's called for protests if HE gets prosecuted for anything. What a freaking narcissist! Trump could have stopped Fauci. Instead Trump is pushing for booster shots. It's all a sham.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    Ron was right.
    Understatement of the century?
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  8. #7
    Dang skippy it is time to end fed law enforcement , been past time , for decades.
    Do something Danke

  9. #8
    Fck the federal law enforcement.
    "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration is minding my own business."

    Calvin Coolidge



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  11. #9

  12. #10
    Will the mainstream Right rethink federal law enforcement?
    Question answered.

    THREAD: SCOTUS ruling protects federal agents from accountability

  13. #11
    When Jimmy Dore and National Review agree on something ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    Ron Paul Told The Truth About The FBI 40 YEARS AGO!

    The Case for Dismantling the FBI
    The bureau is a violent, expansionist, self-aggrandizing, and careless outfit that sits awkwardly within the American constitutional order.
    https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/...tling-the-fbi/
    [archive link: https://archive.ph/d5Zz8]
    Charles C.W. Cooke (28 September 2022)

    In the New York Times this week, Bret Stephens complained that, in unholy conjunction with the Department of Justice, the FBI had disgraced itself yet again with its public smear of Representative Matt Gaetz. “I don’t like Gaetz’s politics or persona any more than you do,” Stephens told a characteristically bewildered Gail Collins. “But what we seem to have here is a high-profile politician being convicted in the court of public opinion of some of the most heinous behavior imaginable—trafficking a minor for sex—until the Justice Department realizes two years late that its case has fallen apart.”

    Which . . . well, yeah. That’s what the FBI is for. Last week, a whistleblower named Kyle Seraphin told the Washington Times that the FBI had adopted “an entirely ridiculous internal process for determining every single national priority.” One must ask: “ridiculous” from whose perspective? Relative to the FBI’s stated mission, its behavior does indeed look “ridiculous.” Relative to its historical conduct, its behavior seems pretty standard. What the FBI did to Matt Gaetz is precisely what it did to Donald Trump. And what it did to Donald Trump is what it’s been doing since it was founded: namely, spying on, or attempting to discredit, anyone who irritates the powers that be.

    This, you may recall, is the same agency that tried to persuade Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself. It’s the same agency that compiled a list of 12,000 Americans, and, upon the outbreak of the Korean War, urged President Truman to jail them without trial. It’s the same agency whose response to the KKK’s murder of civil-rights worker Viola Liuzzo — a murder that may have been abetted by an undercover FBI agent — was to spread rumors that Liuzzo was a heroin-addicted communist and a deadbeat mom. It’s the same agency that kept a file on John Denver — the author of such subversive works as “Take Me Home, Country Roads” — because he was opposed to the Vietnam War. When, in 1974, Deputy Attorney General Laurence Silberman was tasked with reviewing J. Edgar Hoover’s secret papers, he was horrified by what he found. Hoover, Silberman wrote, had allowed his FBI to “be used by presidents for nakedly political purposes” and engaged in “subtle blackmail to ensure his and the bureau’s power.” Matt Gaetz is merely the latest in a long line of victims.

    Many Americans were shocked when they learned the details of last week’s extraordinarily disproportionate raid against a pro-life activist in Pennsylvania. They shouldn’t have been. The FBI thrives on disproportionality — which, when things go wrong, it habitually supplements with innuendo. As Stephens correctly noted, “We tend to err the most when we assume the worst about the people we like the least.” One doesn’t have to admire Randy Weaver to see that the murders at Ruby Ridge could have been avoided if the FBI hadn’t elected to entrap him in the first place. One doesn’t have to admire David Koresh to grasp that the bloodshed at Waco could have been avoided if the FBI had picked him up in town, instead of going in all guns blazing in an attempt to impress Washington, D.C.

    Does the FBI care? Has it ever? No. Since 1935 — and, indeed, even before that, back when it was just the Bureau of Investigation — it has been a violent, expansionist, self-aggrandizing, and careless outfit, which sits awkwardly within the American constitutional order and seems almost proud of that regrettable fact. Apologists for the agency like to insist that it has “changed” since its “bad old days.” But change requires contrition, and none of any significance has been forthcoming. It has been decades since the United States learned who J. Edgar Hoover really was, and his name still proudly adorns the FBI’s headquarters. It is what it is.

    A while back, I jotted down a list of potential reforms of the FBI on a piece of paper on my writing desk. In no particular order, they were:

    • Mandating that if no underlying crime is discovered by the FBI in the course of an investigation, no “process” crimes can result from that investigation, unless those process crimes are a lie to a grand jury or a lie that prevents the exoneration of an innocent person;
    • mandating that, because it is expected to investigate crimes rather than people, the FBI explain in detail at the outset of any investigation the specific cause it has to begin its work;
    • mandating that the FBI, as an agency of the federal government, explain in detail at the outset of any investigation why it, rather than a state or local police force, is getting involved in the case;
    • mandating that the FBI is forbidden from publicly announcing that it is conducting an investigation until charges are brought;
    • mandating that if an investigation is announced in error, or leaked, the FBI publicly announce the closure of the case — if and when that closure comes — and that FBI staff refrain from implying in public that the subject of their closed investigation is guilty.

    Since then, I’ve changed my mind. I still favor all of these reforms, which, if implemented, would undoubtedly improve upon the status quo. But, having reflected a little more on the broader question, I now think that the FBI ought to be destroyed from the ground up. End it. Disassemble it. Dissolve it. Repeal its charter, evacuate its building, spoliate its budget and supplies.

    It is possible, in theory, to construct an earnest brief in favor of an FBI-style police outfit that deals with matters of exclusive federal concern. But, in practice, that case doesn’t amount to a defense of this FBI. Bit by bit, year by year, case by case, the FBI has turned itself into a sort of unmoored Super Police Force, which, despite being nominally accountable to the executive branch, is “independent” from political control. In essence, the FBI’s pernicious tendency toward empire-building is of a piece with that exhibited by the rest of the modern federal government — which, on paper, is tasked with executing a limited and discrete set of national functions, but which has come instead to act as if it represented a better, more moral, more legitimate version of its equivalents in the states. Can that be fixed? Has it ever been before?

    The result of this trend has been disastrous. In the heart of its capital city, the United States now has a bureau that intervenes with impunity in our ideological and partisan disputes; that has developed a massive, statutorily unwarranted intelligence-collection wing; and that has never managed to escape the paranoia and corruption of its execrable, tyrannical founder. Americans who are tired of it all ought to insist that it be dismantled wholesale, and that any replacement be approved only after a long, meaningful, sanctimony-free debate about the role of the government — and its enforcers — in our lives.

  14. #12
    Abolish the FBI.

    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status...34587459825664
    Republicans Grill FBI Director Over Rampant Misconduct—As Indignant Democrats Defend the Bureau. Plus: Interview with Judiciary Committee Member Rep. Mike Johnson (LA) | SYSTEM UPDATE #114
    https://rumble.com/v2zns0y-system-update-show-114.html


    CLIPS:

    INTERVIEW: Republicans Grill FBI Director Christopher Wray, w/ Rep. Mike Johnson | SYSTEM UPDATE
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbuWOeyWLng


    HEARING RECAP: Democrats Shield FBI From Scrutiny | SYSTEM UPDATE
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exS-eEONjZc

  15. #13
    And the ATF, for their own good.

    https://twitter.com/RealGunLobbyist/...28455905730566

    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  16. #14
    h/t @ClaytonB: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post7185003

    FBI Built Fake Bombs To Place Outside NYC Synagogues!
    There’s little question that the FBI has adopted the routine practice of seeking out down-on-their-luck and marginalized individuals, persuading these individuals to engage in terrorist activities, and then give themselves a very public pat on the back after arresting the alleged “terrorists.” Well now a federal judge has ripped into the FBI for doing just that with the so-called “Newburgh 4” who were talked into plotting to bomb synagogues and shoot down military aircraft. Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss how anyone could question whether the FBI was involved in the January 6 riots considering the bureau’s track record.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5Nwt1wU-QQ

  17. #15
    Apparently, the American version of the Praetorian Guards needs its own Praetorian Guards:

    https://twitter.com/tomselliott/stat...26570156380401
    Last edited by Occam's Banana; 09-14-2023 at 04:02 PM.

  18. #16
    When is government going to set up a bureau that protects us from government?



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