There was a meme going around on the Book of Faces that quoted Gropey Joe Biden as saying that no ordinary American is concerned about their Constitutional Rights. I shared it because I remembered him saying it.
Well, what I “remembered” was apparently a Mandala effect issue because he actually said something different. (Thus the “But I was Wrong” in the title.)
The actual quote from the above video is:
“No law abiding citizen in the United States of America has any fear that their Constitutional Rights will be infringed in any way. None. Zero.”
Now, one can quibble whether the “no ordinary American is concerned about his Constitutional Rights” is a reasonable paraphrase or not, but the “fact” checkers (spin-doctors in reality) will be sure to mark it as “false” or “mostly false” because it’s not the direct, word-for-word, quote of what he said.
But let’s go with his actual quote, what he actually said, the “Yes, he really said that.”
“No law abiding citizen in the United States of America has any fear that their Constitutional Rights will be infringed in any way. None. Zero.”
I fear that my Constitutional Right will be and are being infringed.
- Civil Asset Forfeiture could take my property without anything resembling due process. (Fifth Amendment)
- Red Flag Laws can do the same. (Fifth Amendment)
- Widespread government surveillance and electronic monitoring violates the right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” (Fourth Amendment).
- Platforms like Said Book of Faces, Twitter, et al are given government sanction to silence political voices without losing their Section 230 protections. And, for that matter, not being called on their monopoly status (companies have been found in violation of anti-trust laws for “controlling” far smaller fraction of the market than do these tech giants). The way laws are being ignored to give them a pass to censor certain political voices but not others makes them a defacto agent of the State, so, yes, they are infringing on First Amendment rights.
- Oh, and they do want to take my guns.
So, yes, I fear that my Constitutional Rights will be and are being infringed. So, what does that mean in light of Biden’s statement?
- Is he saying that I’m not law-abiding?
- Is he saying that I’m not a citizen (perhaps losing my citizenship through wrongthink?)
- Is he saying this is not the United States of America anymore?
- Or is he simply calling me a liar for saying that I fear such things (even the ones that are actually happening)?
So which is it? Perhaps it’s “Law Abiding” that he disputes. I mean, I suppose that given the complexity, intrusiveness, and often self-contradictory nature of the law, the average American commits three felonies a day without even knowing it. In such case, well, I suppose that could make his statement true in the same way that “No invisible pink unicorns fear being hit by cars” because invisible pink unicorns don’t exist. If there are none, then they can’t fear anything, n’est pas?
Or maybe, he really does mean that this isn’t the United States of America any more? I mean, I read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and…sure the Declaration of Independence was a propaganda piece rather than a legal document but it does outline the philosophical basis of the new country they were forming, a nation unique, or nearly so, in being founded on and defined by a creed rather than anything else, and I look around and see how little of that creed remains in force in official circles (what remains is still well and away better than the rest of the world but that’s an observation on how bad the rest of the world is, not a contradiction to how far we’ve fallen). Perhaps he does mean that no law abiding citizen in the United States of America fears such things because there’s no longer a United States of America, in its original sense, for them to be in.
Or perhaps he just dismisses people like, well, me entirely. Perhaps we simply don’t matter to him. We aren’t fully human in his eyes because we hold the wrong opinions, we believe in the wrong things.
Perhaps the word he’s looking for to describe us is “Untermenschen.”
The Writer in Black 
He’s saying what so many do, that because you fear, it must only be because you’re not law-abiding. Really, uou practice wrongthink, therefore you fear being found out. It’s the same BS argument as “well, you wouldn’t be so defensive if you weren’t really racist/sexist/whatever. If what they’re saying isn’t true, why do you care?”
It’s the same logic an abuser uses to control their victim, and LOTS of people have bought into it (not even realizing their the victims).
the Declaration of Independence was a propaganda piece rather than a legal document
It actually lays out the grievances against the crown, thereby defining what constitutes a “design to reduce them under absolute Despotism” and thereby when you can rightly “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” So not all propaganda.
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realizing
theirthey’re theOy vey. FIFM.
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Since there’s nothing else that *needs* additional input, passing on something I’ve found– a lot of the claimed abuses in Civil Asset Forfeiture turn out, when you try to find the original story, to be These Aren’t My Pants type cases.
So someone is caught red handed, and their defense is that it isn’t their– oh, car, say. Although “not my pants” was an actual claim….
They can’t say who the (red hands) actually belong to.
There’s no way to identify who the (red hands) actually belong to.
They sign a document, under oath, that it is not theirs and they don’t know who it belongs to.
It’s then forfeited.
Since I know there are actual cases of abuse– I’ve seen the evidence, including *both* sides– the way that the vast majority of the big-time stories are half truths at best makes me suspect we’re being manipulated. It’s the same pattern as the Wrongful Police Shootings that blow up and go big. I know there are truly wrong police shootings.
Why do they keep blowing up for “violent thug who attacked a cop while the thug was in the middle of or immediately after a violent crime” cases?
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Define “a lot of.” Because not one that I’ve dived into has been that way. Guy happens to have his winnings (it does happen occasionally) from Vegas in cash. Police claim suspicion of it being “drug money” and confiscate it. Long court battle to try to recover it. Man takes cash out of the bank to conclude a private car purchase. Same story. And so on. Not saying it doesn’t happen, nor that my own “dives” have been exhaustive, but I have to wonder just how prevalent it actually is. But even so that argument only works if the police are confiscating the property in order to return it to its rightful owner.
And in what way, shape, or form does that rebut that the very idea of “Civil Asset Forfeiture” is, or should be, grossly Unconstitutional. “Nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” is not supposed to be a difficult concept.
The best “excuse” that folk come up with is that it’s “necessary” to “fight [fill-in-the-blank]” because the folk doing said fill-in-the-blank are really bad dudes. And so:
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” H. L. Mencken.
And so, when it comes right down to it, I don’t really care how “bad” the “dudes” are who get caught with Civil Asset Forfeiture. “Nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” still should not be a difficult concept.
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“A lot of” as in some guy posts an article (generally either from Reason or strongly sourced from it) and declares it’s a list of victims, and after six hours of digging to find the most primary sources I can, I find out that they had to deliberately remove information to support the assertion.
Such as assuming that the claim of the defendant’s defense attorney is 100% truth, not mentioning other evidence brought at the trial, and stating things in a highly emotional manner.
Yeah, people do have winnings in cash from Vegas. They’d also be able to say what casino they won it at, and the casino has records that will back them up, including video.
Yeah, people do buy cars for cash. They generally don’t do it with the cash that can be shown to have been wired up to their account from a Cartel.
Yeah, people do get told to sign a paper that property isn’t theirs, or they’ll face prosecution. Because they are the ones that claimed it wasn’t theirs and the cops can prove the item is involved in a crime. That came in part out of the cases in the 90s that were reported as someone borrowing a buddy’s car and getting pulled over, then charged for major drug trafficking because the trunk was stuffed with “stuff.”
Or there’s the case that was popular about half a year ago, where the guy claimed the cops got away with stealing thousands of dollars in cash and valuables (I want to say stamps?) from him.
Turns out that the guy had claimed it after the police broke up the illegal casino they were running, put a ton of stuff into very detailed evidence, and in the original stories it was clear the guy was throwing mud, and even eventually admitted as much. Original response was of course the cops had been cleared, the cops investigated it. Much later, one of the cops was investigated for a different matter (by his own department, even), found guilty and punished and the claim was hauled out again– without the under-oath statements from the supposed victim which would contradict the story.
Another pattern is the edited stories will use slightly different names (“Bobby” rather than Robert), or a different town than the other news reports–say, if it was in the Seattle area, it will list a thing as Parkland rather than Tacoma. (It’s the place right next to McChord.) So it takes forever to piece together enough bits to be sure it’s the same story.
You’ve seen me do this over at Sarah’s place. I think the most recent one was the one reported as a dairy and hatred on raw milk, which turned out to be a pretty standard ‘decided they didn’t have to follow the existing rules they’d agreed to, repeatedly’.
The manipulation is on top of basic stupid reporter tricks of not asking any law enforcement to explain themselves, even after a case is finished, nor do the reporters go do any research. (Remember the “why are they buying cannons” thing where nobody bothered to figure out that’s what the bird scaring devices are named?)
And in what way, shape, or form does that rebut that the very idea of “Civil Asset Forfeiture” is, or should be, grossly Unconstitutional. “Nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” is not supposed to be a difficult concept.
Because the due process of law part is in there, even when Reason or their copy-cats edit it out of their reports and take steps to avoid it being discovered in an easy search.
There MUST be cases where it’s abused. That’s just human nature, there’s a law, it will be broken. So why the hell can’t Reason find a case of someone being “forced to sign over their property” where it wasn’t because they’d claimed that it wasn’t theirs or the cops couldn’t show their claims were false? And publicize that all to heck?
Why do the reporters keep neglecting to mention that there was actually evidence, and leaving out the legal processes that were followed?
When people keep making the same choice that is at odds with their claimed goal, it’s logical to assume they have a different goal involved. Same as with BLM.
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he actually said something different
He’s usually saying something different. Today’s is him scrambling sounds as they come out of his face, so it sounds like he’s saying the n-word. I doubt that entered his head, but it’s just… wow. Elder abuse is one name for it. I actually have pity for POTUS when he’s doing that sort of thing. (Then he comes out like a gang-buster commie, and I lose all my pity.)
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I took that to mean that as long as you do what you’re told, you are law-abiding. And won’t end up in the gulag.
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everyone is law abiding til they aint.
when laws are created that make your normal life criminal, you do live in fear and should. and you are a criminal as joe says.
criminality doesnt make you wrong. it used to be a prisonable offence to put your rotten sausage inside another man’s mud maker.
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Not the way I would have worded it, but yes.
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Remember when Microsoft lost an anti-trust case for including Internet Explorer with every copy of Windows?
Foxfier, just curious cause maybe I’m missing your point. Are you saying that Civil Asset Forfeiture is not as big a deal as it seems? Cause I’d say it’s bigger, based on the reports I’ve read. Cash seized from a man on his way to buy an antique truck in another state. Cars seized from people when said cars weren’t being used to commit a crime and weren’t particularly valuable. Property seized from people who were then never actually charged with anything.
Failure to return property when charges were dropped and/or accused was found “not guilty” by a jury. Add to that the incentives to police departments who often get to keep a significant percentage of what they seize…
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Property seized from people who were then never actually charged with anything.
Failure to return property when charges were dropped and/or accused was found “not guilty” by a jury.
Looking into these two are the ones that make me think something is up– because when I can find actual records or even news reports not based on the same initial claim, I keep finding things like they weren’t charged because the property they “signed over”– swore under oath was not theirs in any way shape or form– was the only evidence against them, or that while they were found not guilty, the jury found their co-defendant both guilty and to be the owner of the crime-involved property.
Same pattern as the Trayvon Martin shooting, with reports before the media-focused attorney got involved painting a picture that matched the evidence but not the hype.
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