George Rebane

The Nevada County Republican Women Federated should feel justifiably proud for putting on one of the best organized and attended public speaking events in recent memory.  More than 600 people showed up last night in the Grass Valley Veterans Hall to hear Sheriff Richard Mack deliver a rousing defense of local governance against the established overreach of the federal leviathan.

Former county supervisor Ms Fran Freedle (pictured lower right) chaired the small committee of women who worked months to plan, organize, and bring about this occasion that was attended by a broad spectrum of political interests and perspectives from Nevada County and environs.  My Jo Ann was a long and hard working member of that committee, so I was privy to the bumps and progress as the sheriff’s visit drew nigh.

(I was also one of the husbands conscripted to assist, serving as the projector guy and Nevada County chauffer for Sheriff Mack.  Friends Russ Steele and Norm Sauer handled the lights, and friends Jim and Mary Booth next door contributed their guest house for the sheriff to decompress and freshen up before the night’s reception and talk.  Earlier in the day Sheriff Mack attended a luncheon at the National Hotel with Sheriff Keith Royal and other local law enforcement officers.  Needless to say, I also had ample opportunity to talk privately with Sheriff Mack.)

As corroborated by other attendees, Sheriff Mack is not the most polished of public speakers, but that makes his heartfelt monologue come across more genuine and peer-to-peer to his audiences.  He dwelled on his successful case against the ‘Brady Bill’ that reached SCOTUS from which it received a favorable landmark ruling that further corroborated the Founders’ intents as to the rights and powers of the several states when confronting the federal government.

I will not attempt to recount the details of his talk; it was recorded by the NCRWF and will be made available online in due course.  Other accounts of it will be appearing in the comments hereto.  But I do report that I found Sheriff Mack’s vision of the Constitution and its prerogatives for local governance to be very similar to mine, and the expressions of it on these pages.  From the stats presented by his Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (www.cspoa.org and http://www.sheriffmack.com) and the national tea parties, it appears that this little trumpet gives voice to values and attitudes shared by millions of Americans – contrary to the collectivists’ indictments, I am not alone.  Onward –

1.     Let’s first dispose of the naïve, yet still prevalent in some circles, view that ‘enforcing the law’ is a crisp and unambiguous enterprise that can be carried out with unquestionable uniformity, and has been done so by all ethical public executors sworn to uphold such laws.  In my memory, the first (and last?) to believe in and characterize such deportment was television’s Marshall Matt Dillon in ‘Gunsmoke’.  And even his own episodes contained exceptions galore which put a human heart into one tough hombre.

Well-read adults soon come to realize that laws are and have been enforced arbitrarily, sometimes gratuitously, and always according to the whims and judgment of the law enforcing executive or officer.  There is nothing uniform or absolute about the way codified laws are enforced at any level of government – it is ever up to the legally installed executor as to how he will honor his oath to uphold the laws of the land, which in America stem from the various interpretations of the Constitution.  If there is any lingering doubt as to this eternal truth, then just review the decisions and actions of our current President and his administrative minions.

2.    ‘Just Say No!’  That has been a consistent theme that I have been trying to promote with our local governments, especially the Board of Supervisors.  In other words start a campaign of resisting federal dollars that arrive with a large ‘users manual’ of diktats of how we should spend those monies plus be obligated to vacuum more dollars from local residents to fulfill another socialist wet dream from Washington (the same would apply in a different manner to Sacramento dollars).  If we do it right, it could well start a national movement of counties responding similarly.  (The response to date has been one of sniffed indignation from the castrato chorus in the Rood Center.  They are not even interested in exploring the possibility of regaining and increasing local autonomy, instead filing such pleadings under the heading of “rural myths”.  Sheriff Royal and Congressman LaMalfa were our only elected officials to to accept their invitations and grace the event.) 

Sheriff Mack preached the same message last night, and he has a similar vision of such resistance going viral across the country.  As the slowly parboiled frog, we have grown accustomed over the recent decades of forfeiting our hard earned dollars to the IRS in excess of what any Constitutional government needs.  And then we strap on our knee pads and beg for a fraction of it to be returned so that we can fulfill higher up mandates that may also be of some benefit to us locally.  Sadly, the experience from many of such federal and state programs has been exactly the opposite, with the enduring result that the boot heel of the big guy with the gun is ground ever more firmly onto our collective necks.  Even government schools have had a hard time teaching youngsters to not make a pretend pistol out of their hand and comply quietly to higher authority, no matter how idiotic the required behavior may be.

3.    Cherry picking the Constitution is a charge from many collectivists when they don’t hear their favorite clause/amendment cited in the currently politically correct interpretation.  Sheriff Mack focused heavily on the Second Amendment (see below), and didn’t cover the others enough to satisfy  a broader discussion of the Constitution.  Special umbrage is visited when the 14th Amendment is unacknowledged in such instances, for many on the Left see that amendment as some sort of a cleansing agent that abrogates much of the foregoing in the Constitution that they find inconvenient for their brave new world.

As one of three Reconstruction Amendments, the 14th was written for a time and a purpose now widely dilated.  Its equal protection clause (#4) has been used for everything from righting obvious national wrongs to telling us how to tie our shoes (well, almost).  The bugaoo is how to interpret ‘equal’, because as we know, one person’s equal is another’s greater/less than or just plain different (orthogonal to the purists).  But if you’re bent on fundamentally transforming the country, and want to use the Constitution as a crutch, then the 14th is just what the doctor ordered.

I can see a time when the state might order the burning of books (a la ‘Fahrenheit 451’) and ban the publishing of others, arguing that under the equal protection clause not all citizens can learn to read equally well and therefore some would be more privileged as they gain knowledge from books not equally available to everyone.  Yes, clearly the 14th is a well-funded central planner’s playpen.

4.     The Second Amendment.  Much has been written and argued in these pages about “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.”  Let me just focus here on my belief that the widespread ownership and bearing of arms in America is a fundamental and needed aspect of this democratic republic that has kept it stable, allowed it to persist, and continues to make the United States the world’s exceptional sovereign nation-state.

Given our freedom to move and associate, the 2nd amendment right does not come without cost.  Those read in statistics will recognize that the population in the extremes (tails) of any distribution of mental stability grows as the overall population grows.  And the ‘free ranging’ part of that tail population can be abetted by public policies that grant literally everyone the right to roam the streets and countrysides, no matter their mental condition.  Our considered response to the damage these people can do to society is limited to attempts to deny the opportunity to inflict such damage by the wholesale denial of the same means to the entire and overwhelmingly sane population.  We do this in the name of security and safety.

While Sheriff Mack believes that we can peacefully resolve the problems of a country historically polarized in its views, values, and politics, many others believe that the federal government will, in its hubris, relentlessly continue to deprive us of our rights and freedoms to the point of Civil War #2.  (The appellation, while erroneous, does communicate.)  As part of its preparation for such complete control and compliance, the entire population must first be disarmed.  This also prepares us for succumbing to the initiatives and objectives first presented in the UN’s Agenda 21 plan for earth’s future (q.v.).

So according to Sheriff Mack’s lights, which I share, the horrible price we must occasionally pay to let the insane have access to guns is part of the cost of maintaining liberty and our freedoms.  Letting government be the only owner of deadly force will create a world of untold suffering, orders of magnitude worse than the occasional mass shootings that we suffer (for which there are other plausible remedies).  And pointing out that this has yet to happen and that some quiet little gun-banning country like Denmark
is still OK misses history and represents a stasist and incorrect view of how the world works – a much circled barn in these pages.

Summarizing the takeaway from last night, a friend put succinctly what many people today believe – ‘I would feel so much safer living in a county with a constitutional sheriff who I know would not only protect my rights, but the rights of all county residents.’

Exit question for Nevada County Sheriff Keith Royal – If word comes down from Washington to confiscate the guns of Nevada County residents, how will you respond?