It’s flattering when readers respond to my columns with their own thoughts, agree with me or not.  To those who have done so, or will do so in the future, thank you. I really do mean that. I read and enjoy what you have to say, even when I don’t publicly respond.

Back in April, Jeff Justis of Oxford, Mississippi, wrote to the Oxford Eagle, taking issue with my opposition to state-funded media like NPR and PBS. I’ve singled out his letter for a public response, because he correctly points out my overall position and raises arguments I find worthy of engagement.

I apparently associate, Mr. Justis observes, “with a group of Americans that distrusts anything associated with or funded by the government.”

Mr. Justis has me dead to rights, although the “group” he alludes to is not necessarily a formal organization of people who agree on everything, or even most things.

Why should I  be more trusting of government?  “Government is, after all,” Mr. Justis writes, “Of the People and should not be considered an adversary.”

His solution to the problem of bad government is “to elect representatives who reflect the principles expressed in our Constitution.”

I disagree with the claim that the US government is “Of the People.”

The US Constitution was ratified 235 years ago, by a tiny fraction of one percent of the people living in the United States  (which itself was about one percent of the current population). And even at its adoption, that Constitution denied the vote to, among others, women and the enslaved.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789, “no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. … Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.” Nineteen years was how long Jefferson calculated, given life expectancy at the time, it would take half of the adults who ratified a constitution to have died.

Even assuming a “majority rule” principle, which I find unjustifiable, very few politicians are elected by majorities of their supposed constituents. The more usual number is 20-25%. Many people choose not to vote. Others aren’t allowed to. Still others vote for losing candidates. Why should any of those people be bound to laws passed by “representatives” they didn’t choose, just because a tiny, long-dead group so decreed centuries ago?

And I go farther than Jefferson in rejecting even “majority rule”: Anything less than unanimous consent of the governed  makes government an act of force, and not of right.

And that force is deadly. According to the late Dr. Rudolph Rummel, “democide” — murder by government — was the leading cause of death in the 20th century, accounting for more than 200 million killings.

I don’t trust people who arrogate to themselves the power to run my life and credibly threaten to kill me should I disobey. Nor do I apologize for that distrust.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) 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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What differentiates David Charles Grusch — who claims that the US government has in its possession “intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin” — from previous people making similar claims?

The big and obvious difference is that his back story seems to check out. For purposes of comparison:

Bob Lazar, a celebrity in the “The Truth is Out There” community, claims degrees in physics from MIT and electronics from CalTech. Neither university admits he studied or graduated there. He claims to have worked as a physicist at the Los Alamos Meson Physics facility. The facility says “nope.” He claims to have worked at a UFO research facility near the notorious Area 51, for the US Navy, as a contractor with defense firm EG&G. EG&G says they’ve never heard of him.

Grusch, on the other hand, apparently really is a former US Air Force officer, really did work for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, and really did represent the NRO with the Defense Department’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. Those vouching for him include a retired colonel who also served on the task force, and a current official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center. He filed at least two “whistleblower” actions (in 2021 and 2022) with the Intelligence Community Inspector General relating to the claims we’re hearing now.

If we discount the possibility that Lazar’s true credentials were disappeared by a Grand Conspiracy to Hide the Truth, he doesn’t look very credible.

Grusch, on the other hand, looks credible indeed … to those who trust the US government.

I don’t trust the US government.

I truly do want to believe that at least some “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (aka UFOs) are spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin.

I think there’s an at least mildly convincing circumstantial case for the idea that the post-WW2 technological revolution received assistance from a distance — reverse-engineered technology from crashed/captured alien craft, or even direct, helpful contact from the people who built and piloted those craft.

But to really believe it, I’d need to see real proof, not just claims un-backed by physical evidence, no matter how seemingly credible the source.

My gut feeling about the Grusch disclosures is that we may be seeing a “modified limited hangout” — a term coined by John Ehrlichman in planning the Watergate cover-up, but most concisely defined by Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock in their book Killing King; Racial Terrorists, James Earl Ray, and the Plot to Assassinate Martin Luther King Jr.:

“[A] modified limited hangout involves providing a story that is a mix of truth and falsehoods; when the false part of the story is exposed, the hope is that the receiving party throws the baby out with the bathwater.”

The idea being that when Grusch is somehow discredited, or discredits himself, the public will go back to sleep on “the UFO issue” for a little while longer.

If that’s the game, well, the truth will still be out there. We’ll find it sooner or later.

But probably not from the government.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) 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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As I write this, former US president Donald Trump’s probably finishing up his morning shave routine and picking the suit he’ll wear to his arraignment, later in the day, on 37 federal criminal charges relating to his possession and handling of “classified information” since leaving office. For this matter, if nothing else, Trump deserves the thanks of a grateful nation.

Wait … what?

Yes, really.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Trump fan, nor do I entertain much doubt concerning either his guilt or his silliness in pushing the matter well beyond the point where  special counsel Jack Smith had to decide between pulling the indictment trigger or capping off his 30-year prosecutorial career as a legal laughingstock.

It’s that silliness, that pushing, for which Trump deserves our thanks.

As a small-time con artist — he’d likely be worth more today if he’d just stuck his inheritance in an indexed mutual fund instead of risking it on weird scams — and B-list entertainer, Trump mistakenly thought that going political dilettante for a few years would endow him with the same kind of immunity/impunity enjoyed by his opponents and predecessors.

Turns out that’s not how it works. The American political establishment holds a grudge. So much so that in bringing Trump down, it puts its own members in real legal jeopardy for perhaps the first time.

It’s not that American politicians aren’t crooks. They are. But traditionally they face few if any, and light if any, penalties for their crimes. That’s probably about to change.

It’s too early to tell if there’s real evidence behind House Republicans’ allegations that Joe Biden and his family members took millions of dollars in foreign bribes, but if the evidence is there, Biden and Trump may well end up sharing a special “Executive Suites” prison wing with their respective Secret Service details.

Once the dam breaks, that wing might require subsequent expansion to make room for bribe recipients like Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and “classified information” mis-handlers like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

OK, maybe not those two —  some culprits will probably enjoy de facto amnesty/pardon, especially if they’ve retired from politics and can bring themselves, unlike Trump, to shut up — but being a crooked or corrupt politician seems like it’s about to get riskier. I wouldn’t want, for example, to be a member of Congress who wasn’t a millionaire when elected and who has somehow since attained a level of wealth my government salary doesn’t explain.

If Trump’s presidency and post-presidency does produce that kind of result, I’ll take his supporters’ claims that he’s the greatest president in history a little more seriously than I used to. And maybe even donate to his prisoner commissary fund.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) 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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