08/01/2014
The other day, James Kirkpatrick noted in Mark Steyn Channels Sam Francis–Without Naming Him, that Mark Steyn was working on Sam Francis’s idea of "anarcho-tyranny", in which petty regulations are enforced strictly against ordinary citizens (it’s almost impossible to get a pistol permit in New York City) but actual criminals run free. (It’s almost impossible for an illegal alien to be arrested in New York.)
Now Steyn seems to be channeling Federale’s ICE SVU idea, in which the Homeland Security troops do everything but secure the homeland. In The Home Front, [July 29, 2014] Steyn writes
Thirteen years ago, I opposed the creation of the "Department of Homeland Security" — on the classic Thatcherite ground that if you create a bureaucracy to deal with a problem you'll never be rid of it. I had expected the usual "mission creep" but that term barely covers what’s happened in the last decade. There is no "homeland security": At the southern border, the homeland is wide open, and ICE and the Border Patrol, which (like CBP) are both part of DHS, are actively colluding in homeland insecurity.Meanwhile, Homeland Security "agents" busy themselves raiding the Foxy Lady strip club in Brockton, Massachusetts, because the foxy ladies were giving away knock-off Red Sox or Patriots merchandise with every two lap dances, and dispatching six vehicles to a home in Statesville, North Carolina to seize an imported Land Rover that doesn’t meet EPA emissions standards.
Both those incidents were covered by Federale here in ICE SVU Hits The Strip Clubs and ICE SVU, Ignoring Child Smuggling, But Busting Land Rovers.
Steyn goes on:
In September 2001, the then Attorney-General, John Ashcroft, rationalized the new Homeland Security apparatus as follows: "There is absolutely no guarantee that these safeguards would have avoided the September 11th occurrence," he said. "We do know that, without them, the occurrence took place." And so, without Homeland Security "agents" whiling away their work days checking out exotic dancers or climbing into the full Robocop to terrorize a couple of suburban car collectors, another occurrence could easily occur, couldn’t it?On the other hand, whatever’s occurring at that wide-open southern border doesn’t pose any risk of additional occurrences occurring, does it? So don’t worry about it.
There is a pattern here. As I wrote here three months ago:
In the Second World War, when the Japanese took Singapore and inflicted what Churchill called the most ignominious defeat in British military history, it was famously said of the colony’s ill-prepared defenses that the guns were pointing the wrong way. In America today, the guns seem to be pointing the wrong way.
They're pointing — Steyn was talking about the Bundy Ranch there — at American citizens.
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