The Shadow of Claude Dallas

 Senseless, lawless violence -- government reduced to its essence: BLM employee C.J. Ross commits a felonious assault on Nevada property rights activist Ken Greenwell, in Palomino Valley, Nevada, November 13, 2001. Greenwell had staged a peaceful protest of the BLM's theft of cattle belonging to rancher Ben Colvin. Ross, acting on behalf of the rustlers, took offense. Note the contrast between Ross's snarling, feral visage and the incredulous composure displayed by Greenwell, and ask yourself: Which of these two displays the civilized face of freedom?

When they arrived at the cattle camp in Nevada’s ParadiseValley, the three shabbily dressed men claimed that they were interested in ajob. Their timing was a bit odd; it was November, a little late in the year fora ranch to take on new hires. As it happens, the visitors weren’t looking forwork as buckaroos; they were looking for the wiry, brown-haired ranch hand namedClaude.

 

“You’re Dallas, aren’t you?” one of the strangers, a mannamed Frank Meale, asked the hand. When the young man replied that he was,Meale-- an undercover FBI agent -- and his two comrades -- FBI agent GeorgeSchwinn and Elko County Deputy Sheriff Noel McElhany – seized him, cuffed him,and stuffed him into the worn-out pickup truck that had brought them to thebunkhouse. 

 

A few months earlier, Claude Dallas had been secretlyindicted by a federal grand jury, triggering a nation-wide manhunt by the FBIand the U.S. Marshals Service. Dallas, an Ohio native, had drifted west toNevada, where he found work as a cowboy. Polite, disciplined, and literate,Dallas distinguished himself by his appetite for honest work and his generaldisdain for the dissipations available in local saloons. He was alsodisinclined to talk about his background – a trait he shared with many otherswho chose this itinerant lifestyle.

 

“Claude is true Old West,” commented rodeo champion CortlandNielsen. “A lot of guys try it, but the first time they have to shave with coldwater they change their mind. Claude keeps going after it and after it. Heshould’ve been alive in the old days – a scout, the guy you send a day or twoahead to tell you how things are. He’d be perfect.” A photographer from National Geographic agreed with thatassessment, which is how Dallas ended up being featured in a story entitled “TheAmerican Cowboy in Life and Legend” – a clue not even the FBI could miss. 

 

The officers who arrested Dallas said he was polite andfriendly. His captors didn’t reciprocate. Dallas was flown across the country,frog-marched through airports in handcuffs and a belly chain. On his arrival inMt. Gilead, Ohio, he was thrown into a drunk tank, where he was singled out forabuse by sheriff’s deputies.  

 

Dallas was regarded as an exceptionally depraved offender: Hewas a “draft dodger,” having refused induction in 1968. This isn’t because hewas afraid to fight, or unable to – a fact well understood by the predatorybureaucrats who tracked him down. 

 

“Most likely he’ll try to run, but he may try to shoot itout,” Meale told the other two members of his snatch team just before theabduction. “We’ll have to shut him right down.” 

That “arrest” took place in November 1973 – nearly a yearafter the Vietnam War officially ended. The indictment against Dallas had beenissued the previous July – a month after the draft was discontinued. Yet theFeds insisted on stalking Dallas, humiliating him, abusing him, and trying toput him in a cage. After the case against him was dismissed because ofprocedural mistakes by the Mt. Gilead Draft Board, one of his kidnapperspromised that the persecution wouldn’t end.

 

“I’m gonna get you, Dallas – even if it’s just for taxevasion,” the FBI agent hissed in his ear as the cowboy was released. 

 

When Dallas returned to Paradise Valley, his fellow ranchhands noticed an ominous change in his disposition. 

 

“They wouldn’t have took me like this if they hadn’t got thedrop on me,” he fumed to friends in the bunkhouse. Dallas “was publicly heard toswear that no one would ever outdraw him again – no one,” recounted Jack Olsen in his book Give a Boy a Gun. “One of his closest friends asked how he feltabout the draft and the Vietnam War. He said that he would fight for hiscountry if he were asked in a nice way, but `nobody’s gonna order me around.'” 

 

Roughly seven years later, two Idaho fish andgame wardens – Bill Pogue, a former Winnemucca, Nevada police chief, and ConleyElms – tracked down Dallas’s campsite about three miles on the Idaho side ofthe Nevada border in Owyhee County. Dallas, who had spent several years workingintermittently as a ranch hand and trapper, had developed a reputation amongfish and game officials – and Pogue most likely considered himself just the manto rein in the “renegade.” 

 

Pogue, like other self-important martinets who seethemselves as indispensable cogs in the “mighty machine of the State,” was anauthoritarian prig who expected deference from Mundanes. Dallas, according to JimStevens, an eyewitness to the January 5, 1981 confrontation, wasn’t undulyimpressed by the uniformed bureaucrat. Dallas, Stevens later recalled, possessed“eyes that showed no fright.” This obviously wouldn’t turn out well for someone.

 

Ever since he had arrived in the West, Dallas had frequentlydisplayed an insouciant disregard for poaching laws. He had a handful of bobcathides in his camp. Although Dallas had a valid Idaho trapper’s license, bobcatseason wouldn’t open until January 9 – four days later. Pogue told Dallas thathe was going to be cited for possessing illegal hides and venison taken out ofseason. Then, according to Stevens, Pogue said he would have to arrest Dallas.

Those words would prove to be a death warrant.

 “Areyou going to take me in?” Dallas asked Pogue. At the time, Dallas and the twogame wardens stood at points of a triangle roughly five to six feet apart. Atsome point, Pogue made a threatening gesture to his pistol. Stevens, who wasbusy elsewhere in the camp, didn’t see what happened next – but he heard theunmistakable report of a handgun, and whirled around to see Dallas in a shooter’scrouch, and a bloodstain spreading across Pogue’s chest. A fraction of a secondlater, Dallas shot Elms as well.

 

The wardens almost certainly died instantly. Nevertheless,Dallas delivered a coup de grace to each of them with a .22 rifle.

 

“Why, Claude? Why?” exclaimed Stevens in horror.

 

“I swore I’d never be arrested again,” replied Dallas. “Theywere going to handcuff me.”

 

Stevens would later testify that the wardens did notthreaten Dallas’s life “in any way.” This isn’t true: Every demand made by agovernment official contains the implicit threat of lethal violence against thosewho refuse to comply. This was particularly true of the armed strangers whothreatened to kidnapDallas at gunpoint – something not mandated by what they called the law, butmade necessary by Bill Pogue’s punitive nature. 

 

“Nobody has the right to come into my camp and violate myrights,” Dallas insisted as Stevens absorbed the bloody aftermath of theencounter. “In my mind it’s justifiable homicide.”

 

Many people in Idaho and throughout the Intermountain Westagreed with that evaluation during the lengthy manhunt and high-profile trialthat followed the killings. The arrest was illegitimate, which meant thatDallas – under the Bad Elk precedent– had the right to use lethal force in self-defense. He didn’t ambush thewardens; he was outnumbered by armed, truculent men, and outdrew them. 

It is true that Dallas had been poaching hides and game.Consider this: Seven years earlier, the Feds had seized him out of season, asit were, by arresting him after Congress had rescinded the hunting license ithad granted the draft-nappers. There’s no moral case to be made for theproposition that poaching game is a crime, but poaching human beings is soundand defensible public policy. 

 

Claude Dallas was not a saint, but he only became a killerwhen he was cornered by gun-wielding government employees who most likely wouldhave found some way to validate the FBI agent’s threat: The FederalGovernment would find some way to “get him,” no matter how trivial theviolation. 

 

The lethal encounter between Dallas and the Idaho gamewardens “fundamentally changed the relationship between the West and thosecharged with preserving its resources,” opinedthe Twin Falls Times-News in aneditorial clotted with collectivist assumptions (derived from the notion that theearth is the State’s and the fullness thereof). “Before Jan. 5, 1981, we hadwilderness rangers; ever since we’ve had wilderness policemen. The conservationofficer who checks your fishing license nowadays is more likely than not to bearmed.” 

 

Of course, this isn’t a novelty, given that the wardens whothreatened to kidnap Dallas were carrying weapons and prepared to use them. Themost important difference is that most wilderness “policemen” have adopted theswaggering, imperious disposition of William Pogue. 

 

Consider the case of Chico, California resident Jeff Newman, 53, a life-long avid skier who operatesa painting business. As a sideline, Newman "tunes" skis and teaches others how to performthis kind of maintenance.

 

Withthe exception of a decade he spent in the employment of the Forest Service(more appropriately called the Sylvan Socialist agency, or SS), Newman has madean honest living. In early 2010, Newman and some friends he had met in theemploy of the SS visited Colby Meadows in the Lassen National Forest, oneof their favorite skiing destinations.

 

Yearsearlier, Newman and his friends built a bulletin board -- with the permissionof the SS -- on which could be posted maps and emergency information. Duringtheir recent visit, one of Newman's friends, Larry Chrisman, posted anadvertisement for Newman's ski tuning service on the otherwise vacant bulletinboard.

 Neither of them thought more of the matter untila few days later, when an armed, bellicose SS troglodyte named Paul Zohovetz materializedon Newman's doorstep in full battle array.Newman initially thought Zohovetz was a customer. Quite the opposite was thecase: He had traveled more than fifty miles to threaten Newman with a citationfor posting a commercial flier without the specific permission of the SS.

 

Asis often the case in such situations, thefoul-tempered official busybody began to harass Newman about mattersthat had nothing to do with the flier.

 

"I'mnot sure what this is all about," Newman complained.

 

"You'reunder arrest," snarled Zohovetz by way of reply.

 

Newmancommanded the armed intruder to leave his property. Zohovetz, already guilty ofcriminal trespass, compounded the crime by threatening to attack Newman with adeadly weapon by pointing his Taser at the man's face and neck.

 

That’sright: Even the Regime's forest rangers are now equipped with portable electro-shock torturedevices.

 

"Hehad this look in his eyes like he wanted to beat the crap out of me,"Newman recalled. A diabetic who suffers from permanent nervous system damage,Newman was understandably concerned that a Taser attack would kill him. So asany rational person would, he fled into his house. His deranged assailant,badly overestimating his physical prowess, tried to kick down the door,succeeding only in leaving a muddy footprint.

 

Newmancalled Chrisman to his home as a witness. Zohovetz, having failed in his effortto bully the mild-mannered Newman by himself, called for backup from the localpolice department. After his friend arrived, Newman emerged from the house,only to be handcuffed. As a result of not taking insulin yet that day, he wentinto convulsions.

 

Satisfiedthat he'd made whatever point he sought to make, Zohovetz released Newman andtold him that he was only issuing a "warning" regarding the flier. He also issued acitation for "threatening an officer," a charge that carries a sixmonth jail sentence and a $5,000 fine.

 

Theappropriately named SS spokesman John Heil insisted that Zohovetz behavedappropriately by driving 50 miles to issue a "warning" and thenneedlessly escalating a trivial matter into a life-threatening confrontation. 

 

Whenthe case went to trial in March 2011, U.S. District Court Magistrate Craig M.Kellison ruled that Zohovetz “had no right to remain on Newman’s property oncehe had been ordered to leave.” He also cited a Supreme Court precedentacknowledging that the “freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challengepolice action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principalcharacteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.” 

 

It’sall but certain that those in the leadership echelons of SS are aware of theoutcome of that case – and it’s just as likely that they have made a consciousdecision to ignore it. This would explain a nearly fatal incident involving SSofficer Shawn Tripp that took place in Montana’s Little Belt Mountains lastNovember 26. 

 Bill and Tammie McCutcheon, residents of Roundup, Montana,were on a hunting trip with their four children – two teenagers and18-month-old twins. Tammie, along with her 12-year-old daughter andthe twins, had pulled over to the side of the road while Bill and the couple’steenage son gone into the nearby forest. 

 Tripp,who was patrolling on a four-wheeler, approached the truck from behind. Tammie toldthe Billings Gazette that sheinitially thought Tripp, who was wearing a jacket with no insignia identifyinghimself as a federal officer, was another hunter. When she asked Tripp who hewas, the SS officer “refused to identify himself and demanded that she get outof the truck.” 

 

Things became immediately and dramatically worse, recountsthe Gazette. Tripp began “questioningher about whether they had driven past the `road closed’ sign…. TammieMcCutcheon said she was worried about her twins alone in the truck but wastrying to respond to Tripp's questions. The encounter escalated, TammieMcCutcheon said, when Tripp tried to remove a hunting tag from theantlers of a deer in the back of the couple's truck. Tammie McCutcheonsaid she believed Tripp had no authority to remove the tag, and she grabbed itfrom his hand, bumping against him as she reached for the tag.”

 

Owing to the State supremacist indoctrination he had received,Tripp perceived that incidental contact as the high and grievous crime – nay,sin – of “assaulting a federal official.” Accordingly, he grabbed the terrifiedmother, threw her up against the truck, and roughly cuffed her hands behind herback. He then shoved her face-down on the open tailgate and began to paw theshrieking woman beneath her clothes. 

 

Tripp might consider this a “search”; by any rational definition,it was a sexual assault by an armed stranger who had spit out several angrydemands but refused to identify himself (not that doing so would have justifiedhis actions).

 

“Ithought I was going to get raped," Tammie later recalled. The noiseattracted the attention of her husband Bill, who had reached the top of a smallnearby hill – and looked down to see, from about 100 yards away, a man ontop of his wife as she screamed for help.

 

Hurryingdown the hill, Bill ordered the assailant to leave his wife alone. As Tripplater admitted on the record, the properly infuriated husband never pointed hisrifle at him – even though he would have been well within his legal and moralrights to use lethal force to stop the assault. Tripp, however, drew his pistoland pointed it at Bill, ordering him to drop his rifle. At one point, accordingto Tammi, the “unstable” and “muttering” SS enforcer pointed his sidearm at thecouple’s 12-year-old daughter. 

 

Acall for assistance issued by Tripp was answered by Wheatland County SheriffJim Rosenberg, who was hunting nearby. The Sheriff, who should have arrested Tripp for aggravated armed assault and sexual battery, chose instead to arrest Bill, who was heldin jail for five days before being released. Significantly, in an interviewwith an investigator hired by the McCutcheons’ attorney, Sheriff Rosenberg wastold by Tripp that Bill never pointed the rifle at him.

Nonetheless,Bill and Tammie were indicted in federal court on January 26 on charges thatthey “forcefully assaulted, resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, andinterfered” with Tripp. Bill McCutcheon faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000fine; Tammie – whose “crime” consisted of protecting herself from a sexualassault, could be sentenced to 8 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

 Duringa dispute over the SS’s actions in closing down a road in Nevada’s Elko Countya decade ago, the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade, alocal citizen’s group ran a radio ad describing the agency’s personnel as“armed and dangerous.” 

 

“TheForest Service has a new policy of issuing citations for the following offense:Operating any vehicle off road in a manner which damages or unreasonablydisturbs the land, wildlife or vegetative resources,” observed the radio spot.“If apprehended by Forest Service personnel, consider them armed and dangerousand cooperate with them to the fullest. Then contact the Jarbidge ShovelBrigade for assistance.” 

 

Thatprompted a petulant complaint from the SS that the ads were “inflammatory” andtended to promote “ill will” toward the agency. Oh, dearie dear – we can’t havethat, can we?

 

LikeJeff Newman – who was once employed by the agency -- Bill and Tammie McCutcheoncan testify of the indisputable truth of the characterization offered by the ShovelBrigade. Their experiences also underscore the wisdom of having the means todefend one’s self and one’s family in the event one encounters a predatory Fedin the wilderness – or, as Newman’s case demonstrates, in one’s own home.  

For killing the two wardens who tried to kidnap him, Claude Dallas eventually served 22 years for voluntarymanslaughter. The foreman of the jury that convicted Dallas later said that he would have been acquitted ofall charges if he hadn’t delivered what was most likely a gratuitous coup degrace. The Regime remembers those details. We should, as well. 

Obiter Dicta

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Santorum: State Murder as a "Moral Enterprise"

“God did not just give us rights,” pontificated His HighHoliness Rick Santorum duringa January 17 campaign stop in Lexington, South Carolina. “He gave us amoral code by which to exercise them. See, that’s what Ron Paul sort of leavesout. He leaves out [that the] rights and responsibilities that we have comefrom God…. And he says, `No, we just have rights, and then that’s it.’ No, wedon’t. America is a moral enterprise.” And morality, Santorum believes, is best instilled through State coercion, including officially sanctioned murder.

Santorum presented that assessment just a few hours after aGOP debate in which Dr.Paul precipitated torrential booing from the pious Republican crowdby insisting that government is bound by the central tenet of the Christian moral code – the Golden Rule. 

According to Newt Gingrich – whose General Urko actdrove the assembled Republicans into a simian frenzy of bloodlust – it is “irrational”of Paul to insist that there are limits on the government’s powers ofdiscretionary killing. 

Elaborating on that idea in a January18 interview with South Carolina pastor Kevin Boling, Gingrich assertedthat Dr. Paul’s insistence on applying the Golden Rule to foreign policydemonstrated that he had absorbed the “anti-American, self-hating attitude ofthe American Left.” 

That accusation of moral lassitude against Dr. Paul – who servedin the military as a young father with two small children – dribbled down themultiple chins of an impenitent Chickenhawk who used his wife as a draftdeferment, then spent the last few years of the Vietnam Era schtupping collegegirls. ("We would have won in 1974 if we could have kept him out of theoffice, screwing [a young volunteer] on the desk,” lamented hiscongressional campaign director.) 

 In the same interview, Newt -- who is the Hogarthian embodimentof several of the deadly sins – reiterated the indolent smear that most of Paul’score supporters are young people obsessed with recreational drug use (somethingin which Newt indulged before emerging as the self-appointed “Teacher ofCivilization”). Perhaps inspired by Santorum’s example, Newt used thatcaricature as the basis for his own little collectivist homily.

“We have been endowed by our Creator with certain unalienablerights, but that means we have to be citizens,” Newt decreed, claiming that “aheroin addict or a methamphetamine addict [has] lost the ability to be a truecitizen.”

There is nothing in the Declaration of Independence thatdescribes rights as contingent on citizenship. According to that document, individualrights are innate and unalienable; government, on the other hand, enjoys acontingent existence, and can be altered or abolished whenever it imperilsthose rights. In that scheme, the purpose of citizenship is to restrain thegovernment, rather than to submit to its supposedly ennobling influence.

Like most of the people who support him, Dr. Paul has nointerest in drug consumption, recreational or otherwise. He simply understandsthat the federal government has no constitutional authority to wage war on drugconsumption, and that no government anywhere has the moral authority toregulate what individuals choose to ingest. He likewise understands thatprohibition always engenders lethal violence – something vividly illustrated bythe horrendous death toll exacted by Washington’s proxy drug war in Mexico,which has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 2006.

Once again, Dr. Paul’s perspective on this question isinformed by the New Testament: “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth aman; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man…. Do not yeyet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly,and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceedeth out of themouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heartproceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness,blasphemies....” (Matthew 15:10-12,16-19) 

While Jesus of Nazareth neveruttered a syllable endorsing drug prohibition, He had a great deal to saydenouncing war and related violence. To judge from the priorities and behaviorof the “Christian” Right, one would assume that exactly the opposite were thecase. 

Although Rick Santorum’s politics are detestable, he is arobustly decent husband and father. That certainly isn't true of the humanpustule called Newt Gingrich. Although sharply different in terms of theirpersonal deportment, Santorum and Gingrich share a totalitarian worldview: Theyassume that while nobody is virtuous enough to govern himself, they belong to aconsecrated caste that is holy enough to rule over others. 

Reaching for a big historical idea and falling badly short,Santorum attempted to depict Dr. Paul as a Jacobin:

“I would argue that [Dr. Paul’s] understanding of theConstitution was similar to the French Revolution…. Their founding watchwordswere the words, `liberty’ and `fraternity.’ Fraternity. Brotherhood. But nofatherhood. No God. It was a completely secular revolution. An anti-clericalrevolution. And the root of it was, whoever’s in power rules.”

Bear in mind, once again, that Santorum offered thatdescription of the candidate who – just hours earlier – had been publiclyridiculed for insisting that God’s law, the Golden Rule, applies to everybody,including those who preside over the criminal enterprise called the State.Furthermore, among the current GOP presidential contenders, Dr. Paul is theonly candidate to extol the Constitution as a law that restrains thegovernment. Santorum, on the other hand, consistently seeks to restrain theindividual and emancipate the State. While he insinuates that Ron Paul is ananarchist (he isn’t -- none save One was perfect, after all -- but he should be), Santorum has giddily celebratedState lawlessness. 

During an October visit to SouthCarolina, Santorum endorsedassassination as an instrument of policy when employedby the U.S. government.

“On occasion, scientists workingon the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead," he explained, broadlyintimating that the U.S. government was responsible. "I think that's awonderful thing, candidly….I think we should send a very clear message that ifyou are scientist from Russia or North Korea or from Iran, and you are going towork on a nuclear program to develop a nuclear bomb for Iran, you are notsafe."

Santorum,who is regarded by somemisguided conservatives as a champion of the pro-life cause, warned thosewho doubt that the U.S. government would assassinate civilian scientists shouldtake heed to the way it treats American citizens designated enemies of theState: "When people say, `You can't go out and assassinate people' — well,tell that to al-Awlaki…. We've done it. We've done it to an Americancitizen."

Actually, the Obamaadministration not only assassinated U.S.-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki —who was never charged with a crime of any kind, let alone convicted andsentenced by a court -- but also al-Awlaki's 16-year-oldson, Adbdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in Yemenwhile he was having dinner with a cousin (who also perished).


The Obama administration circulatedthe story that the 16-year-old was actually an adult “suspected” of being a“militant,” thereby redefining the killing as a strategic success. But thefamily was able to document that the youngster — who hadgone to Yemen in a frantic search for his father, known to be on a U.S.assassination list — was born inColorado in 1995.


Behavior of this kind isgenerally associated with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il.Proponents of an aggressive foreign policy often characterize the regimesruling countries such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea as despotisms thatroutinely "murder their own citizens," and thus pose a threat to thepeace of the world. Yet Rick Santorum — who yields to nobody in his zeal towage war against distant and relatively powerless regimes — openly celebratesthe summary execution of U.S. citizens, and describes it as a model for similar"wet work" operations against citizens of other countries. 


For Santorum, the definingprinciple of politics is power, not liberty. His chief ideological inspirationis not the imperfectly realized individualist James Madison, or even thecentralizing constitutionalist James Madison, but the arch-authoritarian Josephde Maistre, the 18^th Century apostle of absolutism. His role modelin policy terms could well be the murderous “Operative” from the film “Serenity.”


Maistre taught that “allgreatness, all power, all social order depends on the Executioner; he is theterror of human society and tie that holds it together. Take away thisincontrovertible force from the world, and at that very moment order issuperseded by chaos, thrones fall, society disappears." 


Santorum visibly shares the fearthat society will disintegrate if the State is deprived of the discretionarypower to kill people. In the film “Serenity,” the Operative acted as Maistre’sExecutioner on behalf of a galaxy-spanning bureaucratic empire called theAlliance. He spent most of the film pursuing River Tam, a brilliant and irrepressiblyindividualistic young girl with psychic abilities who had been abducted by theregime and programmed to be an assassin.


River’s brother, a giftedphysician named Simon, sacrificed his future to free River, and the two of themwound up aboard the Serenity, a merchant ship commanded by a noble butembittered man named Malcolm Reynolds. Years earlier, Malcolm (or Mal) hadfought with the “Browncoats,” a group of separatists who waged a valiant butlosing battle for impendence from the Alliance. 


In his pursuit of River and Simon,Alliance forces commanded by the Operative lays waste to an outpost calledHaven, where Mal and his crew had briefly found refuge. Similar Allianceattacks have destroyed every other colony where Mal might have taken cover.
“I’m sorry,” the Operativeexplains to Mal following the massacres. “If your quarry goes to ground, leaveno ground to go to…. [D]id you think none of this was your fault?”


“I don’t murder children,” Malreplies with frigid disgust.


“I do,” the Operativeunblinkingly replies. “If I have to.” 


“Why?” Mal demands. “Do you evenknow why they sent you?”


“It’s not my place to ask,” theOperative wearily explains. “I believe in something greater than myself. Abetter world. A world without sin.” 


Although he possesses none ofthe Operative’s fearsome martial prowess, Rick Santorum likewise believes it ispossible to build a better world through State murder – not just Iraqi, Afghan,Pakistani, and (soon) Iranian children, but American children like Abdulrahmanal-Awlaki. 


It’s little wonder that Santorum – like Newt Gingrich and the deathcult adherents who compose much of the GOP’s rank and file -- finds Ron Paul’sdevotion to the Golden Rule to be morally unsatisfactory. 

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When the Right to Resist Becomes the "Duty to Submit"

  

Anne Dekins was a loud-mouthed party girl -- or at least, that's what the arrest warrant suggested. Whatever she may havedone in the past, Miss Dekins was quietly minding her own business when OfficerSamuel Bray found her on the street and began to haul her away.

Dekins wasn’t inclined to goquietly, and she put up a struggle. Her cries for help attracted the interestof several armed men led by an individual named Tooley, who confronted Bray anddemanded to know what he was doing to the frantic woman. The officer producedhis official credentials and insisted that he was making a lawful arrest for“disorderly conduct.” When witnesses disputed that description, Bray called forbackup. 

Tooley and his associatesordered Bray to release the woman, and then took action to enforce that lawful order.After Bray’s partner was killed in the ensuing struggle, Tooley and hisassociates were arrested for murder. The trial court threw out the murdercharge, ruling that the warrant was defective. Since the arrest was illegal,the court pointed out, Dekins had a right to resist – and bystanders likewisehad a right, if not a positive duty, to assist her. The defendants were eventuallyfound guilty of manslaughter, but quickly pardoned and set free. 

By trying to enforce an invalidwarrant, Bray “did not act as a constable, but a common oppressor,” observedthe trial court. Tooley and the other bystanders were properly “provoked” bythe act of aggressive violence against Anne Dekins, and their forceful butmeasured response – first demanding that the abductor release the hostage, thenexercising defensive force to free her – was entirely appropriate. 

Lawless violence against thehelpless “is a sufficient provocation to all people out of compassion” in anycircumstance, observed the court, “much more where it is done under a colour ofjustice, and where the liberty of the subject is invaded….” In fact, an act ofthat kind carried out by a law enforcement official is nothing less than “aprovocation to all the subjects of England.”

Every Englishman “ought to beconcerned for Magna Charta and the laws,” concluded the Queen’s Bench inthe 1710 case Queen v. Tooley.“And if any one against the law imprison a man, he is an offender against MagnaCharta.”

Roughly forty years earlier, thesame court had issued a similar opinion in HopkinHuggett’s Case. Huggett and his friends had come to the aid of a manwho had been arrested by a constable named Berry. Huggett demanded to see thearrest warrant. When Berry produced a clearly spurious document, Huggett drewhis sword and demanded the prisoner’s release. Berry refused, and finishedsecond in the ensuing swordfight. 

The wrongfully arrested man inthat case (who was threatened with impressment into the military) did nothingto resist his abduction. It wasn’t clear that Huggett knew the man, or had evenmet him prior to the incident. Yet the Queen’s Bench ruled that Huggett’sactions were justified, since a situation in which a “man [is] unduly arrestedor restrained of his liberty … is a provocation to all other men of England,not only his friends but strangers also[,] for common humanity’s sake.” 

In addition to codifying theCommon Law right to resist arrest, HopkinHuggett’s Case and Queen v. Tooley recognized that this right inheresnot only in the victim, but in citizens who interpose on the victim’s behalf. 

Simply put: When a policeofficer commits the crime of unlawful arrest, the citizens who intervene areacting as peace officers entitled to employ any necessary means –including lethal force – to liberate the victim.

In early 18^thCentury England, this was seen as anon-negotiable bulwark against what the heroic Algernon Sidney called “theviolence of a wicked magistrate who, hav[ing] armed a crew of lewd villains,”would otherwise inflict his will on innocent and helpless people with impunity.Sidney’s martyrdom at the hands of precisely that kind of degenerate,tyrannical magistrate underscored the vitality of the principle he expressed.  

 “The right to resist unlawful arrestmemorializes one of the principal elements in the heritage of the Englishrevolution: the belief that the will to resist arbitrary authority in areasonable way is valuable and ought not to be suppressed by the criminal law,”observed Paul Chevigny in a 1969 Yale LawJournal essay. Actually, Chevigny – like many others – elides a criticaldistinction between “power” and “authority”: While a police officer may havethe power to abduct or abuse aninnocent person, citizens have the authorityto prevent that crime.

Until the late 1960s, moststates recognized – albeit grudgingly -- the Common Law right to resist arrest.By 1969, that right had been transmuted, through judicial activism, into arevocable “privilege” – one that had to be dispensed with to serve the interests of the State's punitive caste.

“The weight of authoritativeprecedent supports a right to repel an unlawful arrest with force…. This wasthe rule at common law,” admitted the Alaska State Supreme Court in a seminalwork of sophistry called Terry Glenn Miller v. State of Alaska. “Itwas based on the proposition that everyone should be privileged to usereasonable force to prevent an unlawful invasion of his physical integrity andpersonal liberty.”

That admission clearlyanticipated the familiar use of the magical conjunction “but” as a rhetoricalreset button, and the Court didn’t disappoint:

“But certain imperfections inthe functioning of the rule have brought about changes in some jurisdictions. Anew principle of right conduct has been espoused” – by whom, the Court didn’tspecify. “It is argued” – once again, the parties to that argument were notidentified – “that if a peace officer is making an illegal arrest but is notusing force” – something that could not occur, given that an arrest, by strictdefinition, is an act of armed coercion – “the remedy of the citizen should bethat of suing the officer for false arrest, not resistance with force.”

 “The control of man’sdestructive and aggressive impulses is one of the great unsolved problems ofour society,” pontificated the Court as it destroyed one of the few effectivechecks on the deadliest manifestation of those impulses. “Our rules of lawshould discourage the unnecessary use of physical force between man and man.Any rule which promotes rather than inhibits violence should be re-examined.”That objective is not legitimately served by granting State functionaries an unqualified licenseto commit criminal violence against the innocent. 

Four years after the Miller decision, a decision entitled Richardsonv. Idaho emerged from the Idaho State Supreme Court’s emunctoryaperture. John Richardson had been convicted of resisting arrest throughviolence and sentenced to five years in prison. The incident in which thesupposed crime occurred took place at a restaurant in Idaho Falls. Richardsonand his ex-wife, who were having dinner, got into an argument, and were askedto leave when the latter became loud and profane. 

Two off-duty police officersescorted them outside, and then tried to arrest Richardson for “disorderlyconduct” after he became annoyed by their unwarranted intrusion. Richardsonkicked one of the uniformed buttinskis in the mouth, and managed to grab one oftheir pistols, which he fired into the air, rather than at his assailants (ashe was entitled to, both morally and – under the Supreme Court’s still-valid 1900 Bad Elk precedent – legally).

Prominentlyciting the Miller decision in Alaska,the Idaho Court observed that “More than one state has, without legislativeaction, modified the traditional common law rule and has adopted the rule thata private citizen may not use force to resist a peaceful arrest,” blithelyignoring, once again, the fact that a “peaceful arrest” is a creature morefanciful than a left-handed unicorn that speaks Norwegian. “We are of theopinion that the trend is, and should be, away from the traditional common lawrule, and therefore we hold that if a person has reasonable ground to believehe is being arrested by a peace officer, it is his duty to refrain from usingforce or any weapon in resisting arrest regardless of whether or not there is alegal basis for the arrest.”

The key holding in theRichardson ruling has been enshrined in the Idaho Code Judicial Instructions(ICJI 1262), which asserts that “it is the person’s duty to refrain from usingforce or any weapon in resisting arrest regardless of whether or not there is alegal basis for the arrest.” The obverse of this spurious “Duty to Submit toArrest” is a police officer’s privilege to commit criminal acts for the purposeof nullifying the Exclusionary Rule – something the Idaho Supreme Courtacknowledged in a 2008 ruling captioned State v.Lusby. 

Police paid a visit to Lusby’sapartment to investigate a disturbance. She quickly grew tired of the uninvitedcompany – what decent person wouldn’t? – and went into her apartment, closingthe door behind her. One of the officers committed an act of criminal trespassand announced  that Lusby was under arrest for “obstruction” and “resistance.” Atone point the bully caught an elbow in the face from the victim, a small down-paymenton what he deserved – but enough to earn Lusby a charge of felonious assault onan officer. She was also charged with drug possession on the basis of evidencefound in the officer’s illegal search.

Because that search was patentlyillegal, the trial court granted a motion to dismiss all charges against Lusby.The State Supreme Court admitted that this was the case – but insisted that Lusby’s resistance to the illegal invasion of herhome retroactively legalized the unconstitutional search.

“It appears to be a nearlyuniversal rule in American jurisdictions that when a suspect responds to anunconstitutional search or seizure by a physical attack on the officer,evidence of this new crime is admissible notwithstanding the prior illegality,”decreed the court, extracting that “rule” from precisely the same orifice fromwhich the Richardson rulingoriginated. “The rationale … [is that] a subsequent attack on the officer is anew crime unrelated to any prior illegality…. Accordingly, we hold thatevidence of Lusby’s alleged batter on an officer or other forceful resistanceis not suppressible … [and] evidence of paraphernalia found in the searchincident to Lusby’s arrest [is] admissible.”

On this construction, a policeofficer can nullify the Fourth Amendment anytime he pleases, simply by claimingthat the victim committed the supposed crime of resisting. This can take theform of assuming an “aggressive posture,” such as “blading” the body or evenputting one foot in front of the other in what can be construed as an “attackstance.” Or, as the recent assault on Austin, Texas resident Antonio Buehlerdemonstrates, the “assault” can be nothing more than breathing in the face of apolice officer. 

Buehler, 34, is a combat veteran of Kosovo and Iraq, West Point graduate,and middle school teacher.He was serving as a designated driver on the morning of New Year’s Day when hesaw a woman being abused by police outside a 7-11. The costumed assailants,officers PatOborski and RobertSnider, were conducting what they called a DWI arrest of a woman lateridentified as Norma Pizana.

To Buehler and his friends, thespectacle looked more like a gang assault.

"We hear a loud scream, andwe look over, and we see the cop violently yanking the female out of the caronto the ground," Buehler told local ABC affiliate KVUE. "She is screaming. The other copran up and they both sort of grabbed her arms. Her hands were behind her backstraight out and they lifted her up by her arms. It looked extremelypainful."

With the help of a friend,Buehler began to document this act of "street justice" with his cellphone. That prompted Oborski to confront Buehler, who was not interfering inany way.

According to Buehler, Oborskibarked, "What the hell are you taking pictures for?"

"My response was, `I amallowed to. Public official in a public place.'"

 As he was trained to, Oborski started to lie in an effort to devise a cover charge against Buehler.First he claimed that Buehler was somehow "interfering with the investigation,"which was patently untrue. Then the cop assaulted Buhler by pushing theunresisting man — who would have been more than a match for the donut-grazer,had he chosen to fight back — up against a truck.

"Once he had me pinned upagainst the back of the truck he kept leaning in," Buehler continued."He kept pushing me."

Eventually Oborski got so closethat Buehler actually breathed on him — which gave him a pretext to accuse thewitness of "spitting" on him. With some difficulty, and Snider’s help,Oborski wrestled Buehler (who offered only passive resistance) to the groundand handcuffed him. The cops took Beuhler to a BAT van—- a patently unreliable mobile alcohol testing unit — in the hope of documenting that thewitness was intoxicated, which he wasn't. The cop finally settled on charginghim with "harassing a public servant" — a third-degree felony — and"resisting arrest."

As is always the case inincidents of this kind, Buehler wasn’t arrested for an actual crime; hewas vindictively punished for “contempt of cop.” 

“You don’t f*** with cops,” Oborski snarled at Buehler. “Youdon’t get in our f***ing way. You don’t question us, and we’re going to teachyou a lesson.”

Norma Pizana’s plight was strikingly similar to that of AnneDekins, with at least one critical difference: Dekins and her rescuers were blessedto live in 18^th Century England, a relatively civilized society thatrecognized and protected a free individual’s indispensable right to resistState-licensed criminal violence. 

Acknowledgements and Updates

Once again, thanks to everyone who has donated so generously. This really means a great deal to me and my family.

Among the reasons why my activity here at Pro Libertate has tapered off somewhat is the fact that I've been very busy curating the blog at Republic magazine. Check out the website and, if you're interested, sign up for a free digital subscription. 

Some of you are aware that my wonderful wife Korrin has been hospitalized several times since 2006. She's in the hospital again. I would appreciate prayers on her behalf from those of you so inclined. Thank you.

Dum spiro, pugno!