Editor's Corner: ‘Dangerous ideas and invaders’

There is a loose but nevertheless determined confederacy in the making that is attempting to undermine the government of the United States and set up rump mini-governments consisting of special interests and foreign invaders in its place.

This confederacy is largely the brainchild of the ultra-liberal establishment, although some ultra-conservatives are in on it as well. It takes care to present itself as legal, and in fact masquerades as law-abiding and establishmentarian, but is anything but that. Even some levels of the judicial system are in on it.

It is not unlike the communism and fascism of the first half of the 20th century. The fascist and communist leaders were able to convince ordinary people they were being led down the right paths, but those paths led to death and destruction, with nearly 100 million outright murders and several wars over several decades being the result.

A good example of how this is working in the present millennium is the readiness with which supposedly ordinary people embrace idiotic ideas as being wise. Young men and women on college campuses are using violence to keep people with whom they claim not to agree from speaking, even though these students may not know who those people are or understand what they are trying to say. These young people threaten violence to keep people with whom they don’t agree from speaking in public on certain campuses, even in California, which was once the envy of the world for its freedom-loving universities.

Just one woman, Ann Coulter, an arch-right-wing commentator, sends some of these students into paroxysms of Nazi-like threats and demonstrations akin to the burning of books in the 1930s. This is even though none of these goofballs would have been required to attend her planned lecture. She is just one woman armed only with her ideas. But nothing scares a modern college student these days like an idea or two that he or she has been told is bad.

And these universities which attract and harbor these pathetic burners of their parents’ money have themselves become pits of administrative misbehavior, stealing money from students and the taxpayers in order to line their own pockets and fatten their own pensions.

And these people want to convince others they are the smart ones, the ones entitled to make the laws of the land and ignore the will of the people.

Then there are the outright lies, the right-is-wrong and wrong-is-right sorts of lies that are being codified into law by an electorate that has sold its votes to the advertisers willing to spend the most on television time so they, the voters, don’t have to be bothered to think about anything except what’s for dinner.

The marijuana laws are a perfect example. Marijuana use has been legalized to some degree in most states — but it still is illegal throughout the land. The federal drug laws on marijuana haven’t changed. It remains a controlled substance, the use of which is a felony.

This puts the marijuana-loving states, including California, at high risk, because they rely on the tacit agreement of the federal government not to enforce federal laws prohibiting this drug. That cannot stand, because federal laws must be enforced equally throughout the land. Even Harvard lawyers understand that. Eventually, the federal government will have to legalize marijuana nationwide or shut down all marijuana operations in all states. The Congress has lost its way on this.

Few in Congress want to say yes or no on marijuana. They are afraid they might lose a vote or two, depending on what side a voter’s preference might fall. When it comes to marijuana, there is no there, there. The only guideline for most members of Congress is hypocrisy and the extreme danger that at some point foreign marijuana interests will assert themselves and invade the U.S. in order to gain dominance of the market. Some say that already is happening. We see many signs of it here in California, even in our own San Joaquin Valley.

But we already may have lost the anti-crime war in California. We have replaced determinant sentencing, which worked by keeping criminals off the streets for prescribed amounts of time, with early release, that has put crooks back into your neighborhoods. These moves have been sold as compassionate attempts at rehabilitation of prisoners, but ask your friendly neighborhood cop if that is working. And there is no compassion for the crime victims.

Sheriffs who attempt to work with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers risk being confronted by their colleagues in other local enforcement agencies over local laws that prohibit cooperation with federal authorities to send illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin. This is insanity. We are the most generous of countries in our immigration laws, yet we are condemned for attempting to enforce our own borders and protect our own citizens, including those citizens who are legal immigrants.