Charles Meckler, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots was arrested in New York for possessing an unloaded handgun in a locked box. He passed it over to airline officials for safe keeping on a flight from New York to Detroit and somehow local cops were alerted.
The Blaze story quoted here I think gets it wrong, as this is a New York state violation, not federal, for Meckler had a license to carry in California, and said he mistakenly believed he could carry it anywhere. Seeing how he openly notified airline officials of the gun, I expect he was honest in this defense.
But, in the legal sense it is no defense at all, unless a jury buys it, and no one thinks it will ever see a jury. Meckler was arraigned on a Class C felony and released, and while news media says the offense can up to 15 years in jail time, usually a fine is paid, and usually on a reduced charge to avoid the felony rap.
Legally, that’s probably the end of it, unless Bloomberg wants to make a show case of this…except, unlike Plaxico Burris, Meckler would probably mop up the floor in front of any jury, and get millions in free publicity in the process.
What Meckler has lost for sure is a nice Glock handgun.
But who’s the Rat?
I’m told a lot of conservatives don’t like Meckler, so this is a good test to find out how we feel about things that have to do with a person we don’t really care for. I don’t know much about the man, but as a rule I don’t like anything that has “Big” in front of it…Big Government, Big Labor, Big Business…and big Tea Party. So I probably wouldn’t like Charles Meckler.
But he is a citizen, and, along with thousands of other citizens this year, he’s been the victim of a snitch. A busy-body, a nosey so-and-so. A rat. And possibly a scalp-hunter.
In another day it was hard to get a person to rat out a real crime much less a paper-crime, and often on honor grounds alone. And let’s face it, this is not a real crime. Since we’ve been a republic, citizens have been always been charged with knowledge of the law. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Used to be you went to jail for pretty much the same things you go to hell for. But today that’s all changed, for it’s impossible for anyone to begin to know over 50,000 pages of laws, applying to virtually every human activity, for which ignorance is no excuse. Even large companies with a staff of lawyers can’t keep up, so how can poor Joe Schmo or Charles Meckler know that a license to carry in California, followed by every safety precaution known to man, wouldn’t still end up with a felony charge.
Meckler’s real problem here is that he trusted his fellow man, and that someone was probably across the desk at Delta. His service-provider. The people he paid money to. It’s likely someone at Delta brought this to the attention of New York City police authorities.
And someone higher up than the cop-on-the-concourse had to make a determination that this gun, even locked away, and in the custody of airlines officials, posed a serious legal threat to the City and the State of New York. Calls had to have been made.
It would be nice to know who that person was…and if that person got a finder’s fee of any sort. You know, a bounty. Was he/she a scalp hunter, or just another one of those damned good-deed citizens that keep peeping around the aisles at Walmart?
Something sinister this way comes.
We are entering an era which no American really has much experience with, of never knowing whose eyes are on you. This same fear decimated the entire Russian and east European cultures, for not only were they afraid of the Stasi, but also the millions of eyes who would report to them for any tiny word or deed, for everything from a coupon to get to stand in the first third of the line at the bread counter to a genuine loyal zeal for Karl Marx…or Barack Obama. In Iran children are trained to rat out their parents for saying secret pro-Western things behind closed at home.
This sort of collaboration has always been highly prized among statist regimes.
At Walmart there are eyes peering down every aisle at you if your child or grandchild gets too loud…with the number of Child Welfare on their speed dial. In the schools they are also everywhere, quietly inspecting your child for bruises, or a missing tooth. Could be teachers, nurse’s aides, lunch room servers or even other parents.
And you know some day they will be looking for a hidden crucifix. Wait and see if the Tim Tebow drop to one knee catches on, to see what I mean. And watch for those books that doesn’t look like it is “approved”; the Bible, books about the Founders, any books by Rush Limbaugh.
http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=A2KLqIUm0OxOKj0AvqD7w8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTBncGdyMzQ0BHNlYwNzZWFyY2gEdnRpZAM-?p=charles+laughton+this+land+is+mine&ei=utf-8&fr2=piv-web&n=21&tnr=20#filters=none&facets=none
Their eyes are everywhere.
The State has a great purpose in launching these millions of eyes, for in Russia it turned their people into paranoid drunks. The State knows that we may secretly be doing things that might upset their applecart in every walk of life. Stalin called this “wrecking,” explaining why the USSR, once the breadbasket of Europe, had a crop failure every year from 1917 until only recently.
And those eyes report to dozens of little intermediate politburos, from child services to the EPA to the NLRB. There are political-correctness nazis, religion nazis, parental control nazis, etc, and in some places, such as schools, they all congregate, yet never really knowing the others are there. One’s snitch chain of command may not be the same as the next.
You can see how hard it is to teach your kid to learn to stand his ground against a bully at the expense of a bloody nose, with so many snitches waiting to turn a necessary rite of passage into a felony and 90-day suspension. “It will go on your permanent record, young man.”
Meckler got nailed by a 2nd Amendment nazi, no doubt. They are common enough. They also hang out in bars along with the tobacco nazis.
They are all collaborators, and yes, history has a way of dealing with them, at the right time.
So, what to do about our collaborator while there is still time?
Here’s where I have to turn deadly serious.
First and foremost, we have to let them know we are looking for them. We don’t have to find them, but in fact, we often do. This is a perfect project for local tea party folks who think things are moving too slowly on the national front.
It let’s folks bring shock and awe closer to home.
Just like local elected enablers (such as who propped up the Occupy crowd, or who ignored city ordinances for parade and potty permits, or told the cops to stay home) collaborators, going back to Vichy France, live by two hard and fast rules:
1) They don’t think they will ever be exposed and found out, and 2) They believe their side (the Nazis) will likely win in the end, so someone always has their back.
It’s not hard to disabuse them of these certainties. And again, these are rewarding things local groups can do without waiting for Congress to find its spine. (There is also a trickle-up effect.) Besides, we let this happen.
Most collaborators work within the organization. they aren’t simple working girls just trying to make their way with the new regime in town, as the doxies (shown here) were in occupied France.
A little scalping probably did them no harm, just some public humiliation, and a reminder that they picked the wrong side, just for a few bon-bons and nylons.
While personally I like the idea of shaving peoples’ heads, even scarlet letters, you don’t have to do that. I keep saying this. All they have to know is that you are looking for them, and by using the harsh imagery of shaved heads then, Alinsky-style, just let their imaginations run away with them.
The best thing to get them on the dark side of their front office bosses is to annoy them with every legal request possible for information. It’s like a person being garnished. Every two weeks a new court order comes into the payroll people, who are front office, and who have to spend a lot of extra time filling out the paperwork. After awhile, front office supervisors catch their grief, and slowly it gets around, even down where the guy works, that it would be best if they could find a way to let him go. Garnishees have faced this for years. So should unnamed collaborators.
When an organization gets lots of requests to know the name of just one person, it gets tedious, as almost everyone on the inside already knows who that one person is.
I won’t give away the store here, but we’ve done this before..it is a local operation usually…and while you don’t always know if the culprit gets canned, they sure do earn a jaundiced look from their higher ups once your campaign starts.
To win, all you have to do is make them look over their shoulder. Make them sweat. It’s a proven deterrent.
And let them believe that we just may win and then there will be a head-shaving, or worse, in store for them.
