It now seems that there will be more than (the promised) five parts in this series on the moral militia. Today I will detour from the main road to look at the current event of the FBI grabbing the cellphone of the Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell.
But first, let me reveal the overall thrust of the series and the reason why “moral” appears in its name. I have a background in evolutionary biology. I have no trouble understanding human evil as an outgrowth — maybe a hypertrophy — of ordinary selfishness. All mammals must be self-preserving, which includes grabbing plenty of resources for survival. That can lead to greed, and greed usually involves deceitfulness. People may end up being destructive and cruel.
Today we are surely seeing an increase in deceitfulness and cruelty while values such as fairness and decency go out the window. Those trends will continue — if for no other reason than trends get accepted as the new reality.
If we were “only” animals, I doubt that the current awful trend could be stopped. But humans innately have morality; they know that there is at least a possibility for community members to respect the law. In my lifetime, that was taken for granted until maybe 2001. I am certain it can be restored — pure enlightened self-interest should tell even the most aggressive baddy that his quality of life, too, must suffer under a regime of chaos and violence.
Teaching Us Helplessness
In my opinion, mainstream media has been tasked with making the good life sink as low as possible. They diligently work on our minds to cause a shift in our focus. They want us to drop all the attention we once gave to justice and honesty and watch the circus. Every week there is some new circus. This week it’s the raid on Mike Lindell’s car, which was stopped at a fast-food restaurant in Iowa.
Probably the circus act is more important than the FBI’s obtaining of whatever is they want to get from Mike’s phone. This circus act persuades the TV viewers that:
No law exists to protect a citizen from the theft of his phone and/or any private stuff inside that phone.
There is no accountability by the authorities (in this case, purportedly, the FBI) to the people. Anything goes if the ones doing it are wearing a badge or are driving an official-looking car.
No person high up is ever going to crack down on such people. We should stop expecting justice. “Hey, Everybody, the Perry Mason show is old hat. Grow up.”
Just imagine being able to teach such big lessons, to millions of Americans, merely by conducting a single raid on a guy at a Hardee’s drive-through. And Mike is well-liked, so it even hurts the viewer to see it happening. That’s an added benefit — making people emotionally distressed contributes to the ease of control by those at the top.
Lovely Bunch of Coconuts
So what are we to do with this lovely bunch of coconuts? Well, for starters, one can iterate that the three lessons are inaccurate. There clearly ARE laws against thieving a man’s cellphone and his private data. There IS accountability by the FBI to the people. (Yep). And expectations of justice should NOT DISAPPEAR — we should assume that justice still exists and will make a fierce comeback.
Why not? We’ve got all the apparatus for it, as established over many centuries. And, as I said, mainstream media is the handmaiden of the baddies, so MSM must be cracked down on, into the bargain.
So what is the moral militia? Before I read Edwin Vieira’s thesis (see Part 3 of this series), I meant the word “militia” in Mary’s Moral Militia to invoke merely a general sense of there being a way to fight off the evil trends. But I was delighted to find, from Vieira’s historical analysis, that when the word militia appears in the 1787 US Constitution, it means the kind of militia that was well known in 1787.
That is the citizenry in arms. All able-bodied men — who were ordered to have at home a gun in good condition and could be called up by their state. They were obliged by the US Constitution to be available in case Congress called them up to act against an invasion or an insurrection or to enforce the laws. (Article I, sec 8, clause 15.) Uniformed police did not get started till many years later.
I omit here the issue of Clause 16 (see a later part of this series), where Congress governs the militia. Edwin Vieira makes it clear that there would be no state militias for Congress to call on if there were no state militias. To find out what the state requires of its militia (remember, I am not talking about the “National Guard”), you must look at the particular state’s constitution.
Invasions
When I was ranting, in 2015, about the FBI’s 2013 invasion of Boston (see my book, Boston’s Marathon Bombing), I checked the Massachusetts constitution and found that the governor could lead his troops against the FBI. Don’t waste your time giggling — this is serious government business. As for the FBI stealing from Mike Lindell, one must see what Iowa’s constitution calls for.
As for the southern border states — Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, it appears that without a need for Congressional permission, the state can act against an invasion by immigrants if their constitution allows.
An article in Texastribune.org, dated July 5, 2022 says:
“Kinney County has been one of the focal points of the state’s border security efforts, with officials there arresting hundreds of migrants for criminal trespass on private land as a way to sidestep the local government’s inability to regulate immigration. Shahan said Kinney County had signed an official declaration calling on Abbott to declare an invasion.”
Helping Mike Lindell
There is something special about the Mike Lindell cellphone episode. Mike says the FBI spoke to him for a while at Hardee’s and asked him about the information he had on software companies in regard to the “stolen election.” Subsequently, they grabbed his cellphone. I take that to indicate that they wish to denude Mr. Lindell of any evidence he is carrying that could bring about the indicting of “Software Company D” (not its real name).
I note that Mike mentioned many other things that should not be taken away from him, such as his cellphone’s feature that organizes his hearing aids. Can you imagine! But the FBI can argue that that’s incidental — they need his phone to assist in their case against some persons whose conversations may be stored there.
So it’s the Software Company D data that I would use as an indicator of a crime being committed by the FBI, or its boss, the DoJ, or its boss, the US Attorney General. The name of the crime is obstruction of justice — a federal felony codified at 18 USC 1503. It is defined as an act that “corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice.”
What I mean is that the data sitting in Mike Lindell’s phone, which incriminates the Software people, and which needs to be put to law enforcement (in the proper way), is being taken out of his hands by people whose likely plan is to suppress it.
Do I know that for sure? No, but the massive efforts made to tell us that the 2020 election was hunky-dory leads me to believe that the last thing Attorney General Merrick Garland intends to do is to charge Company D with, um, defrauding voters.
Personally, I would arrest Merrick Garland, or lower-hanging fruit if necessary, for obstruction of justice. I would also arrest any FBI person involved in this scheme (if such a scheme there be) for misprision. No, that word does not mean they’ve missed out on prison, though surely they have. The crime of misprision (rhymes with vision) is codified at 18 USC 4 as follows:
“Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Ding!
