What Should Have Happened
Ready? Fasten your seatbelt.
Kyle Rittenhouse was declared not guilty on the charge of premeditated murder yesterday. That was the correct verdict as he was clearly defending himself – as seen in the video footage from that horrible night.
But Kyle never should have been there in the first place.
In fact, no one should have been there insofar as the rioting was concerned. The right of assembly and free speech doesn’t and can’t mean the right to arson and vandalism. If it does, that’s not freedom, it’s anarchy. To protest against a miscarriage of justice by committing injustice is a fool’s errand. To get mad at me and then go and punch some random dude is obviously wrong, dangerous, and exceedingly foolish.
The people who should have been on trial, if this was a sane society, were the Governor of Wisconsin and Mayor of Kenosha. At the very least they should be thrown out of office for dereliction of duty. The public officials have one task and that’s to enforce the law. For three nights last August, Kenosha was a veritable war zone. Rioting is not political speech. Rioting is violence and violence can only be met by violence. It’s that simple. For the state of Wisconsin to allow for destruction of private property is to abdicate its role of governance.
If I get mad at you and go to your house to burn it down, you must have a right to defense. In such a case, you can and should call the police and they have a responsibility to respond. That’s basic rule of law stuff right there. But if they don’t show up, for whatever reason, then we’ve got a problem, don’t we? That was the situation in Kenosha last summer. There was a vacuum and into that vacuum stepped Kyle Rittenhouse and his AR-15. No, it wasn’t wise for him to be there but the whole point is moot since the government literally wasn’t enforcing the law.
Second, the media that yelled fire in the crowded theatre about the Jacob Blake shooting, which sparked the whole affair should be fired and sent to Siberia on an unheated railway. Instead of soberly reporting the facts, they went hysterical and claimed that Blake was unarmed when he was shot. Oops. They sort of blew that one. He had a knife. Blake admitted as much. Oh, and the police were responding to a call from the mother of his child due to his violating a restraining order against her. Did Mr. Blake have no responsibility for his confrontation with the police? If he didn’t, then we have no rule of law. It’s anarchy, pure and simple.
The media and academics who clamor to abolish the police wouldn’t last a week in the Mad Max world that would produce. Those individuals saying that we need to “tear the system down” because it doesn’t work must explain what would replace it. It’s one thing to gripe about the refs blowing a call. It’s quite another to try and get rid of the refs. How long would the NBA last without refs? How long will society last without rule of law and police? You saw the answer to that as American cities burned last year.
A few years ago I had a trespasser on my business property (the Academy). It was a Saturday afternoon and we were closed. On the security cams I saw a young male trying to open the doors, so I called the police. I drove over and arrived twenty minutes later. The police weren’t there, despite my business being in the main commercial district of the city. The trespasser was still there and, as evidenced from the security footage, still trying to open the doors and doing some light vandalism like knocking down the trash cans. As I drove in the parking lot, he appeared very agitated, his fists were opening and closing and he looked ready for confrontation.
One part of me says, “how dare he!” I’m a martial artist and this is my business. I was irritated that I had to drop what I was doing on a nice weekend day, taking time away from the family, and deal with this nonsense. He had no right to do that or to be there!
Ah, but guess what? I wasn’t in danger. And since I wasn’t in danger I had a duty – moral duty – to not escalate the situation. So I turned around and parked across the street. I called the police again. I waited…and watched him on the cameras. Another twenty minutes and the police finally arrived. The end result was that he ended up leaving. And that, my friends, is the way it’s supposed to work. He showed no aggression to the police and that was the end of it.
Now, a few martial arts guys I know, young hotheads it would seem, said that they would’ve taken him down or something. I counseled them otherwise, explaining that self-defense can’t be used if it’s avoidable. If there’s another option, it can’t be self-defense. We all need to remember that. Violence is so terrible, and life so precious, that we must never, never use force just because we can.
But what would happen if the police never came? Then what? Well, in that case a decision needs to be made, right? In that case it’s either my property or his. One of us has to go. Without rule of law, it’s the rule of the jungle. If one of us decides that the other can’t disagree, the only option is violence or submission (through threat of force). It’s either war or slavery. Those are the principles once the rule of law is jettisoned. What the government of Kenosha did last year was not show up and that created a violent vacuum. I thank God that worse didn’t come from America’s summer of anarchy but I must warn everyone what’s at stake.
The civil authorities are the refs in the game of life. We’re the players. If someone smacks Steph Curry to stop one of his ridiculous three-pointers, he deserves a free throw…three of them, in fact. If the ref blows the call, that’s one thing. It happens and we’re mad about it (Curry fans especially). But if there’s corruption or anarchy (favoritism or no calls whatsoever) that will destroy the game. What’s true there is true of society.
That said, self-defense rests upon the rule of law – and equality before it, both its protection and our responsibility to it. Rule of law doesn’t mean a perfect society because that would require perfect people. It simply means that the law should get involved only when there’s a violation of a person’s body or property. And for rule of law to exist it must have the refs there to enforce the rule of property rights (the person and his/her stuff must be free from aggression). If we get mad that the refs blew a call and we storm the court, we ruin the game. If some refs are incompetent, they need to be replaced with better refs. What we can’t have is no rules, no refs, or the anarchy of everyone storming the court when they lose.
Unless we understand this, and accept it, we approach the abyss of civil war and the destruction of society. People clamoring to “tear it down” either don’t understand what they’re saying or they’re criminals. People who believe violence can be used as anything but a last resort have embraced a principle of evil aggression – and they shouldn’t be in our halls of government, our media, or teaching in our classrooms.
Those who are teaching things like “systemic racism or sexism” are flirting with disaster if they aren’t basing their solution on rule of law as defined here. If your political theories don’t allow for others to be left the heck alone, you’re a tyrant and an enemy of peace. Right now, America has a mass of so-called intellectuals and talking heads who couldn’t win a fight with a wet paper bag and yet they fill the heads of others with rage and alienation. Such people are enemies of civilization. Equality before the law for all – both in responsibility and protection – are what we must teach. Any other theory is drenched in blood.
Kyle Rittenhouse was not guilty of murder but the Wisconsin government is guilty of dereliction of duty. The media that lied about the case are guilty of sparking riots. The academics and commentators that say destruction of property is an acceptable means of protest are cowards and deep threats to civilization. Mr. Rittenhouse should go free. The others, those really responsible, should be run out of office and fired.
We can’t have peace unless we keep our paws off each other and each other’s stuff. We can’t have peace unless the ref calls fouls uniformly. It’s that simple.
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