Category Archives: Op-Eds

Paris: No Grave Too Warm for the Political Class to Dance On

Arc De Triomphe

For a columnist or pundit, there’s no greater temptation than to get something written — Quick! Now! — about the latest, greatest, deadliest catastrophe. After all, if it bleeds it leads.

I felt that urge the night of the Paris terror attacks. For once, I resisted. I wanted more information. I wanted to see how the usual suspects responded. I wanted to see whether or not my own immediate assumptions and predictions would hold up before I held forth.

Unfortunately, my assumptions and predictions turned out to be spot-on. The American and European political classes didn’t bother waiting for the bodies to cool — or, for that matter, to even be counted — before commencing their triumphant dance on the graves. The attacks may have been unexpected, but they certainly weren’t unwelcome. The political class immediately pivoted from a pro forma parody of normal peoples’ heartfelt condemnation to special pleading for more power.

Within hours, prominent War Party mouthpiece (and former US ambassador to the United Nations) John Bolton rushed out a piece on “four important lessons we must learn” from the attacks. Predictably, “never trust John Bolton with any decision more consequential than ordering pizza, and even then be watchful lest ye end up with anchovies” didn’t make the cut.

CIA director John Brennan and his predecessor, James Woolsey, blame whistleblower Edward Snowden for the attacks. Snowden crashed the US intelligence community’s illegal surveillance party. If only state apparatchiks had all the unaccountable and unlimited power state apparatchiks wanted, we’d all be safe, see?

Who should we blame for the murder and mayhem in Paris? Of course — OF COURSE! — the evil individuals who planned and carried out the attacks.

But when the prescriptions of an identifiable American ideological tendency  — call it “neoconservatism,” call it “hawkishness,” call it “interventionism,” call it whatever you like — can irrefutably be observed to have culminated in the horror of 9/11, the quagmire in Afghanistan, the debacle in Iraq, the fiasco in Libya, the rise of the Islamic State and innumerable other evils, at some point we should stop clapping in unison with their blood-soaked boogie-woogie and cease trusting to their highly questionable wisdom for solutions.

Americans and our European cousins face a stark choice: We can stop letting our political classes try to run the world, or we can keep letting the innocent pay in blood for our politicians’ hubris.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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PSA: There’s no Such Thing as an “Accidental” Shooting

Gun photo from RGBStock

At least once a week or so, I read stories about allegedly accidental shootings. These stories always puzzle me, because assuming a competent adult and a non-defective gun, there’s no such thing as an accidental shooting. The two kinds of shootings are “intentional” and “negligent.”

What’s worse is that all too often, these supposed “accidents” involve people who carry guns professionally and have received extensive training in their use. They don’t have recourse to the excuse that they didn’t know what they were doing.

For example, Clayton County, Georgia sheriff Victor Hill was indicted on November 12 for “accidentally” shooting a woman with whom he claimed to be “practicing police tactics.”

In late October, former Austin, Texas police officer Charles Kleinert was granted federal immunity from manslaughter charges for “accidentally” killing a man (he claimed to “only” intended to pistol-whip the guy).

For that matter, a decade or so ago, a DEA agent announced to a room full of students “I’m the only one in this room professional enough that I know of to carry this Glock 40” before “accidentally” shooting himself in the leg. Some professional, huh?

Let’s clear all this “accidental” nonsense up right now. There’s no such thing as an “accidental” shooting. There are only two kinds of shootings: Intentional and negligent.

Look, people: Neither guns nor gun safety are complicated.

The gun is either loaded or it isn’t — and you should always assume that it is. If you don’t, you’re negligent. Period.

If you point the gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot, you’re negligent. Period.

If you leave a loaded gun around where a four-year-old can pick it up and shoot a sibling while playing, you’re negligent. Period.

If you use a gun for some purpose other than the one it was intended for — as a bludgeon, for example — you’re negligent. Period.

Especially, not just “even,” if you are a police officer or a member of the armed forces.

Gun rights activists (yes, I am one) are fond of pointing out that guns don’t kill people, people do. That’s true. It’s true whether the killing is justified or unjustified, and it’s true whether the killing is intentional or negligent.

Negligent shooters  and their supporters need to stop making excuses for negligent shootings. And the 99.9x% of responsible gun owners who take gun safety seriously shouldn’t be tarred with their “accidents.”

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Mizzou Protest: Brownshirts on Parade

Mizzou Stormtrooper

Yes, I understand that invoking the Sturmabteilung, aka the SA, aka the stormtroopers, in relation to protests at the University of Missouri falls squarely into the discourse domain covered by Godwin’s Law (“as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”). But the brown shirt fits, and we should hang it on those comporting themselves in its spirit.

Weeks of anger over administration handling of racial incidents at the university’s Columbia campus culminated on November 9 in the resignations of UM president Tim Wolfe and campus chancellor R. Bowen Loftin. Various opinions on those events and issues aside, most of us should be able to agree on two things:

Yes, students and faculty are well within their rights to protest and to call for resignations or other redress of their grievances. They may be right or wrong on any given subject, but their rights of free speech and peaceable assembly are sacred.

No, those rights do not trump everyone else’s rights to free speech and a free press.

Having solicited attention to their outcry, the protesters are hypocrites when they invoke a “safe space — no media” claim against journalists attempting to report on their actions. They’re well beyond the scope of their own rights and in violation of the rights of others when they mob and physically assault those journalists.

Yes, that’s exactly what happened. If you don’t believe it, hit your favorite search engine with the phrase “#ConcernedStudent1950 vs the media.”

Among other outrages, you’ll witness the spectacle of UM assistant professor of mass media (!) Melissa Click getting in a journalist’s face, swatting at his camera and demanding that he “get out” of a public area, before yelling for “some muscle over here” to remove him.

Is a comparison to the Nazi Party’s street brawlers over the top? I don’t think so. The supposed purpose of the Sturmabteilung was to provide “security” for Nazi meetings and rallies. Its actual function was to physically disrupt the activities of opponents, including journalists whose reporting didn’t toe the Nazi line.

The only substantive difference between the madness of 1930s Berlin and this week’s analog in Columbia is the symbolism. Such tactics serve neither justice nor freedom — the means inevitably sullies the end.

America’s college protest movement dishonors itself to the extent that it continues to harbor and justify intolerance and evil.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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