Great article Christopher. I followed Pawlowski's situation from the start. PSYCHOTIC AND DISGUSTING! It clearly illustrates what the Canadian government and most governments are: EXTORTIONIST THUGS WHO HIDE BEHIND BS LAWS!
Police carry an extra burden. They have the color of law and the "legitimate" authority to project force. They MUST be responsible for the laws they choose to enforce. But few of them ever even think that they can, or should, disobey "orders."
At peak plandemic after seeing police trample protestors with horses and body-slamming nonmaskers, violently yanking children without vax passports out of restaurants I asked local police I'd see what they would do if given similar orders. The universal response (indicating the response they were trained to say) was "I'll follow the Constitution."
All LEO take an oath to uphold the Constitution, an easy response. After the second or third same response I followed up asking, "Who's interpretation of the Constitution?" Explaining that many constitutional questions are decided by split decisions, five judges say constitutional, four say unconstitutional. And that lower court judges are only one judge's opinion. There's different interpretations of what "following the Constitution" means.
My question would continue by asking if they would follow their own understanding of the plain words of the Constitution? Their sergeant's? Their captain's? Their municipal court judge's? District court judge's? State supreme court judge's? Federal appeals court judge's? SCOTUS?
This comprehensive framing of the question was always met with a dumbfounded look and response, "That's a good question, I hadn't thought about it like that before. I guess I would just do what I'm instructed to do. That's above my pay grade. Unless it's something I couldn't do, went against my conscience so badly I'd rather resign."
To which I replied, "So you didn't really take an oath to uphold the Constitution so much as to who signs your paycheck. And hope and trust that it's constitutional because your boss says so."
Their final universal reply would be, "I guess so. If what I'm asked to do offends my conscience that much I suppose I'd quit."
And this, my friends, is what LEO across the nation believe about their jobs. They swear an oath to their paychecks. And hope their bosses don't ask them to be *too* unconstitutional in performance of their duties. They have mortgages to pay, kids to clothe, retirements to grow. The Constitution they take an oath to uphold is whatever their boss says it is. Their own understanding and interpretation of it doesn't matter.
Which means those who trampled citizens protesting, body-slammed nonmaskers, violently yanked small children out of restaurants, etc did so because those actions didn't offend their consciences enough to disobey unconstitutional orders and risk their paychecks. The real truth of it. A truth we can never forget about them. And why unquestioningly "backing the blue" is ignorant and foolish.
You've really got something here. I have been thinking about this issue a lot recently. I have wondered, for example, if there is any entity out there that (legally or job-wise) defends police for acts of conscience.
See my Note on this, where I share your excellent comment.
I think this could all be turned into something—a primer to send around to get cops thinking…
It is double-edged, you know. They could just as easily refuse to arrest illegal immigrants, even the violent criminals among them, an act of conscience.
I don't have easy answer. Just recognizing the reality of the system is different than what's billed. A matter of growing up and seeing reality through the eyes of an adult rather than a child's. Even 50-something year-old's can have child's eyes.
Best solution that you and I already understand is small government with fewer laws. Meaning fewer chances to struggle with the constitutionality of them.
I think so. The police I'd have that conversation with were genuinely moved by it. They really had never thought about their jobs that way and how empty and cliché it is to say they take an oath to and follow the Constitution.
I'd venture to say 80-90%+ never bothered to think that deeply about it. I think LEO becoming more educated about the laws they enforce, the system that determines how they are enforced is always a good thing.
Though many don't care all that much, it's just a job and a paycheck they don't get paid to think on their own about.
The common law gives us lawful excuse to obey the diktats of our conscience. The arresting constable has to make a decision based upon the oath they swore, which is to uphold the common law. The peelian principles of policing; the people are the police and the police are the people. In other words, we all have a duty to do no harm and to not enforce government policy that causes harm. it all comes back to natural law.
I hate to say this, but guns are why most big box stores stopped enforcing mask mandates pretty early on in 2020. Their security guards and staff had been aggressively enforcing them, confronting mask refuseniks (like me). A handful of less restrained refuseniks took matters into their own hands and shot staff and security dead in parking lots and store lobbies. Corporate risk prevention (lawyers and insurance) realized they don't even prevent shoplifting very aggressively for just that reason, risk of death/injury to employees. Why would they for mask enforcement?
Big box stores then shifted to just having barkers at doors, sometimes chihuahua's yapping at your heels as you shopped. But that was it. It was easier to be a refusenik in Big Boxes than Mom & Pop small businesses.
As tragic as the deaths of their employees was, as criminal as the violent refuseniks were, those of us who were allowed to shop - even with yipping chihuahua's - owe a debt of gratitude to them for liberating our faces and allowing the rest of us to survive in public life.
I don't blame the shooters as much as I blame the public officials who mandated divisive, intrusive, enslaving and dangerous to health masks on our faces to create the circumstances that people would violently object to in the first place. They murdered millions "helping" us many different ways. We didn't want or need their "help."
MANY examples easily found online search. My keywords "customer shoots employee over mask" generated many pages of returns from 2020 all across the country, even in gun-controlled Canada. Here's just one that gives many examples, from a Human Resouces trade journal, a corporate info exchange source:
Big box stores, smaller marts, gas stations, restaurants. The big stores finally said "F it" and adopted their shoplifter nonintervention policy for masks.
But they also used it as excuse to install facial recognition camera systems in their stores. The eyes in the sky cameras in the ceilings all over the stores capture every customer, identified mask v. nonmask faces. And here's why:
Compliance. I remember reading about local rules for retailers that often set arbitrary percentage of masked customers requirements. Typically around 93% had to be masked or retailers would be fined. I don't have articles at the ready, but I remember that was reported from Denver at the time, and they weren't alone.
Health departments sent city employees (typically social worker and behavioral health types) to stand outside grocers and other retailers with clipboards, later tablets, marking number of masked vs. unmasked entering store. They even had column to check if masked above nose or if dangling, below nose, even type of mask, bandana, etc. Not joking, this happened. If store had fewer than 93% masking they'd get fined. Eventually the big box stores deployed the in-store surveillance to automate and have available for health inspectors, compliance.
This benefited the big boxes with high traffic. Seven nonmaskers could be in store out of one-hundred customers in an hour and they'd be ok. For a small retailer with ten customers in an hour only one unmasked person would get them fined. No joke, this happened. And that's why our small business owner friends were often worse to us in urban settings than the big corporates.
This is how government and corporations dance together. Bureaucracy meets corporate largesse and develops, deploys monitoring systems. Compliance. How it happens in real world experience. This example stands out, but know it's the same process for most all compliance issues. Small businesses lack the resources, get shafted.
Welcome to early 21st century America - crazy upside-down world. C.S. Lewis said it best about those moral busybody tyrants: “those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
The only police we need are something akin to sheriffs. That's as far as it would go with that. Don't let dirt bags into your community and of you find one inside, immediate and permanent expulsion. Threat of death upon re-entry. Shot on sight.
I have known many wonderful, courageous and good police officers over the years, many order followers and some outright thugs. I know it is a very tough job but unfortunately attracts some psychotics
There are no good cops. They are an organized legal mafia that “protects and serves” the machine, not the public. I used to give a pass to Sheriff’s departments because they are more Constitutionally correct than local, county or state police forces which are bureaucratic enforcement agents. But even the sheriffs where i live now resort to highway banditry. All they do is extract wealth from private citizens, if they can’t or won’t protect grandma at the shopping mall, then they default to revenue generation officers with the authority to exercise force on anyone they deem to deserve it or on orders from above.
I found Academy of Ideas sometime in May-June 2020, one of the few content producers that was putting out information then that made sense of the insanity, long preceding 2020, but made more prescient by it, new content was spot-on.
I have always tried to look at the plight of younger generations through the lens of growing up with highly addictive devices and social media. It can't be easy for parents to wrangle their kids 24/7 and control their usage, especially when so many other parents just let their kids feed their addictions non stop.
I am 59 years old and quite aware of the addictive nature of all this and I still struggle with it, I can't imagine how difficult it is for a child or a teenager who is just trying to fit in and facing all the usual pressures of adolescent peer groups.
Yep, the kids are owned by their phones, but I know plenty of adults that can't leave home without it or have a conversation without incessantly picking it up and scrolling. Pot meet kettle.
I ignore my cellphone. for days at a time, sometimes. Granted, I work from home, and we have a landline. But still, I don't always see texts right away,. and I probably should do better about that. But I am happier erring on the side of ignoring my phone rather than obsessively scrolling it.
And the people who do it in the middle of social gatherings…ICK!
Artur Pawlowski's treatment illustrates that what the government hates most is not murderers or other actual criminals, but rather anyone who disrespects the government and its dictates. Thus Ross Ulbricht's multiple life sentence merely for providing a place people could trade freely without asking permission from the government or paying its demanded extortion fees. Thankfully, Ross is being set free, but many others remain locked up for not genuflecting to the gov's satisfaction.
I'm a bit skeptical of claims that the Internet is responsible for making kids unhappy: it could also be that unhappy kids look for relief there more than healthy kids do. I'm even more skeptical of proposals to "fix" problems allegedly caused by too much exposure to modern technology by limiting kids' exposure, beyond what parents may choose to try on a case-by-case basis for their children. Kids, and also adults, have always been subject to depression and feelings of hopelessness, and blaming this or that external influence misses the heart of the challenge of life, which is to live with a joyous spirit in the face of disappointment, injustice, and the inevitability of death.
And I hear you on the second, and there is some truth to what you say. But the data are accumulating re: technology, and they aren't good. For example—a study was done with older teen girls. Some called their moms and spoke on the phone. Their oxytocin rose and cortisol dropped. Some texted their moms. Their oxytocin fell and their cortisol rose. Lots of other data like that too.
Perhaps those places with limited technology are better off in the long run. Technology may be marketed and sold as useful, but underneath it all it becomes a sordid world of manipulation, anti-privacy and despotism. Maybe somehow the younger generations will become hardened by using all this technology in that they will lose faith and trust in it.
Ultimately, their overreach is our friend. The faster they move to peak crazy, and/or peak oppression, the sooner it will wake up normies. And numbers matter in this.
I even have my doubts with them. But the sheriff is an elected position, so that is supposed to be a buffer to tyranny. So, going forward, there’s gonna have to be serious protections for voting.
I want an Andy Griffith police department to be honest. 😎
Great article Christopher. I followed Pawlowski's situation from the start. PSYCHOTIC AND DISGUSTING! It clearly illustrates what the Canadian government and most governments are: EXTORTIONIST THUGS WHO HIDE BEHIND BS LAWS!
Police carry an extra burden. They have the color of law and the "legitimate" authority to project force. They MUST be responsible for the laws they choose to enforce. But few of them ever even think that they can, or should, disobey "orders."
At peak plandemic after seeing police trample protestors with horses and body-slamming nonmaskers, violently yanking children without vax passports out of restaurants I asked local police I'd see what they would do if given similar orders. The universal response (indicating the response they were trained to say) was "I'll follow the Constitution."
All LEO take an oath to uphold the Constitution, an easy response. After the second or third same response I followed up asking, "Who's interpretation of the Constitution?" Explaining that many constitutional questions are decided by split decisions, five judges say constitutional, four say unconstitutional. And that lower court judges are only one judge's opinion. There's different interpretations of what "following the Constitution" means.
My question would continue by asking if they would follow their own understanding of the plain words of the Constitution? Their sergeant's? Their captain's? Their municipal court judge's? District court judge's? State supreme court judge's? Federal appeals court judge's? SCOTUS?
This comprehensive framing of the question was always met with a dumbfounded look and response, "That's a good question, I hadn't thought about it like that before. I guess I would just do what I'm instructed to do. That's above my pay grade. Unless it's something I couldn't do, went against my conscience so badly I'd rather resign."
To which I replied, "So you didn't really take an oath to uphold the Constitution so much as to who signs your paycheck. And hope and trust that it's constitutional because your boss says so."
Their final universal reply would be, "I guess so. If what I'm asked to do offends my conscience that much I suppose I'd quit."
And this, my friends, is what LEO across the nation believe about their jobs. They swear an oath to their paychecks. And hope their bosses don't ask them to be *too* unconstitutional in performance of their duties. They have mortgages to pay, kids to clothe, retirements to grow. The Constitution they take an oath to uphold is whatever their boss says it is. Their own understanding and interpretation of it doesn't matter.
Which means those who trampled citizens protesting, body-slammed nonmaskers, violently yanked small children out of restaurants, etc did so because those actions didn't offend their consciences enough to disobey unconstitutional orders and risk their paychecks. The real truth of it. A truth we can never forget about them. And why unquestioningly "backing the blue" is ignorant and foolish.
You've really got something here. I have been thinking about this issue a lot recently. I have wondered, for example, if there is any entity out there that (legally or job-wise) defends police for acts of conscience.
See my Note on this, where I share your excellent comment.
I think this could all be turned into something—a primer to send around to get cops thinking…
It is double-edged, you know. They could just as easily refuse to arrest illegal immigrants, even the violent criminals among them, an act of conscience.
I don't have easy answer. Just recognizing the reality of the system is different than what's billed. A matter of growing up and seeing reality through the eyes of an adult rather than a child's. Even 50-something year-old's can have child's eyes.
Best solution that you and I already understand is small government with fewer laws. Meaning fewer chances to struggle with the constitutionality of them.
Agreed. But it might be easier to put out a primer to get them thinking. Shall I work on it, or do you want to, or together?
I think so. The police I'd have that conversation with were genuinely moved by it. They really had never thought about their jobs that way and how empty and cliché it is to say they take an oath to and follow the Constitution.
I'd venture to say 80-90%+ never bothered to think that deeply about it. I think LEO becoming more educated about the laws they enforce, the system that determines how they are enforced is always a good thing.
Though many don't care all that much, it's just a job and a paycheck they don't get paid to think on their own about.
The common law gives us lawful excuse to obey the diktats of our conscience. The arresting constable has to make a decision based upon the oath they swore, which is to uphold the common law. The peelian principles of policing; the people are the police and the police are the people. In other words, we all have a duty to do no harm and to not enforce government policy that causes harm. it all comes back to natural law.
And that’s why we have a 2nd Amendment.💪🙏
I hate to say this, but guns are why most big box stores stopped enforcing mask mandates pretty early on in 2020. Their security guards and staff had been aggressively enforcing them, confronting mask refuseniks (like me). A handful of less restrained refuseniks took matters into their own hands and shot staff and security dead in parking lots and store lobbies. Corporate risk prevention (lawyers and insurance) realized they don't even prevent shoplifting very aggressively for just that reason, risk of death/injury to employees. Why would they for mask enforcement?
Big box stores then shifted to just having barkers at doors, sometimes chihuahua's yapping at your heels as you shopped. But that was it. It was easier to be a refusenik in Big Boxes than Mom & Pop small businesses.
As tragic as the deaths of their employees was, as criminal as the violent refuseniks were, those of us who were allowed to shop - even with yipping chihuahua's - owe a debt of gratitude to them for liberating our faces and allowing the rest of us to survive in public life.
I don't blame the shooters as much as I blame the public officials who mandated divisive, intrusive, enslaving and dangerous to health masks on our faces to create the circumstances that people would violently object to in the first place. They murdered millions "helping" us many different ways. We didn't want or need their "help."
I don't think I heard about these shootings! Do you recall any particular examples now?
MANY examples easily found online search. My keywords "customer shoots employee over mask" generated many pages of returns from 2020 all across the country, even in gun-controlled Canada. Here's just one that gives many examples, from a Human Resouces trade journal, a corporate info exchange source:
https://www.hcamag.com/us/specialization/workplace-health-and-safety/man-refuses-to-wear-mask-shoots-store-workers/229099
Big box stores, smaller marts, gas stations, restaurants. The big stores finally said "F it" and adopted their shoplifter nonintervention policy for masks.
But they also used it as excuse to install facial recognition camera systems in their stores. The eyes in the sky cameras in the ceilings all over the stores capture every customer, identified mask v. nonmask faces. And here's why:
Compliance. I remember reading about local rules for retailers that often set arbitrary percentage of masked customers requirements. Typically around 93% had to be masked or retailers would be fined. I don't have articles at the ready, but I remember that was reported from Denver at the time, and they weren't alone.
Health departments sent city employees (typically social worker and behavioral health types) to stand outside grocers and other retailers with clipboards, later tablets, marking number of masked vs. unmasked entering store. They even had column to check if masked above nose or if dangling, below nose, even type of mask, bandana, etc. Not joking, this happened. If store had fewer than 93% masking they'd get fined. Eventually the big box stores deployed the in-store surveillance to automate and have available for health inspectors, compliance.
This benefited the big boxes with high traffic. Seven nonmaskers could be in store out of one-hundred customers in an hour and they'd be ok. For a small retailer with ten customers in an hour only one unmasked person would get them fined. No joke, this happened. And that's why our small business owner friends were often worse to us in urban settings than the big corporates.
This is how government and corporations dance together. Bureaucracy meets corporate largesse and develops, deploys monitoring systems. Compliance. How it happens in real world experience. This example stands out, but know it's the same process for most all compliance issues. Small businesses lack the resources, get shafted.
Welcome to early 21st century America - crazy upside-down world. C.S. Lewis said it best about those moral busybody tyrants: “those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
They should simply “unburden” themselves by changing careers. We need farmers, builders & manufacturing, not highway bandits.
This is a problem for which we're going to need to find solutions.
The only police we need are something akin to sheriffs. That's as far as it would go with that. Don't let dirt bags into your community and of you find one inside, immediate and permanent expulsion. Threat of death upon re-entry. Shot on sight.
Have you heard of CSPOA?
So True Christopher.
I have known many wonderful, courageous and good police officers over the years, many order followers and some outright thugs. I know it is a very tough job but unfortunately attracts some psychotics
Yep. And the pressure on them, even the good ones, is enormous:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/whos-right-about-copsconservatives
There are no good cops. They are an organized legal mafia that “protects and serves” the machine, not the public. I used to give a pass to Sheriff’s departments because they are more Constitutionally correct than local, county or state police forces which are bureaucratic enforcement agents. But even the sheriffs where i live now resort to highway banditry. All they do is extract wealth from private citizens, if they can’t or won’t protect grandma at the shopping mall, then they default to revenue generation officers with the authority to exercise force on anyone they deem to deserve it or on orders from above.
That article is before I joined and is Very Powerful!
Yeah, that is from the before-time, when I had just a few hundred subs :-)
You came a LONG WAY since then!
And remember Amos Miller? I think he continues to battle the courts over his right to provide raw milk to his Amish community.
He's not out of the woods, but there is some good news: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/big-win-amish-farmer-food-freedom-raw-milk-case/ .
💜🙏✨
This new short video by Academy of Ideas develops the impact of today's technology on kids, Gen Z. Gives more background, depth of the subject.
https://theacademyofideas.substack.com/p/the-great-rewiring-of-childhood-why
I found Academy of Ideas sometime in May-June 2020, one of the few content producers that was putting out information then that made sense of the insanity, long preceding 2020, but made more prescient by it, new content was spot-on.
Thank you for adding this to the conversation. This is a very real problem!
I have always tried to look at the plight of younger generations through the lens of growing up with highly addictive devices and social media. It can't be easy for parents to wrangle their kids 24/7 and control their usage, especially when so many other parents just let their kids feed their addictions non stop.
I am 59 years old and quite aware of the addictive nature of all this and I still struggle with it, I can't imagine how difficult it is for a child or a teenager who is just trying to fit in and facing all the usual pressures of adolescent peer groups.
Right. Plus their neuroplasticity is high and they were raised on the things. Their relationship to them must be almost symbiotic…
Yep, the kids are owned by their phones, but I know plenty of adults that can't leave home without it or have a conversation without incessantly picking it up and scrolling. Pot meet kettle.
Totally.
I ignore my cellphone. for days at a time, sometimes. Granted, I work from home, and we have a landline. But still, I don't always see texts right away,. and I probably should do better about that. But I am happier erring on the side of ignoring my phone rather than obsessively scrolling it.
And the people who do it in the middle of social gatherings…ICK!
Artur Pawlowski's treatment illustrates that what the government hates most is not murderers or other actual criminals, but rather anyone who disrespects the government and its dictates. Thus Ross Ulbricht's multiple life sentence merely for providing a place people could trade freely without asking permission from the government or paying its demanded extortion fees. Thankfully, Ross is being set free, but many others remain locked up for not genuflecting to the gov's satisfaction.
I'm a bit skeptical of claims that the Internet is responsible for making kids unhappy: it could also be that unhappy kids look for relief there more than healthy kids do. I'm even more skeptical of proposals to "fix" problems allegedly caused by too much exposure to modern technology by limiting kids' exposure, beyond what parents may choose to try on a case-by-case basis for their children. Kids, and also adults, have always been subject to depression and feelings of hopelessness, and blaming this or that external influence misses the heart of the challenge of life, which is to live with a joyous spirit in the face of disappointment, injustice, and the inevitability of death.
Right there with you on the first graf.
And I hear you on the second, and there is some truth to what you say. But the data are accumulating re: technology, and they aren't good. For example—a study was done with older teen girls. Some called their moms and spoke on the phone. Their oxytocin rose and cortisol dropped. Some texted their moms. Their oxytocin fell and their cortisol rose. Lots of other data like that too.
Perhaps those places with limited technology are better off in the long run. Technology may be marketed and sold as useful, but underneath it all it becomes a sordid world of manipulation, anti-privacy and despotism. Maybe somehow the younger generations will become hardened by using all this technology in that they will lose faith and trust in it.
Yeah, I do have some hope about my son's generation (Z). But then again, my son is awesome, so maybe he is skewing my perceptions.
They just keep doubling down on crazy.
It’s breathtaking.
I am absolutely amazed at the JK Rowling book thing.
Thanks for posting!
Ultimately, their overreach is our friend. The faster they move to peak crazy, and/or peak oppression, the sooner it will wake up normies. And numbers matter in this.
Well if Trump makes Canada the 51st state… then we can go up there and confront the Canadian Nazis. That’ll be fun.
Plenty of Nazis down here, methinks!
True… can’t wait for my next doctors appointment!
I am just hoping to get a bunch of medical stuff done before the next time they institute mask mandates. 'Cause I ain't doin' it!
Indeed I have.
This is detached from the thread. You mean heard of CSPOA? I really wish those guys had more money and better organization!
I even have my doubts with them. But the sheriff is an elected position, so that is supposed to be a buffer to tyranny. So, going forward, there’s gonna have to be serious protections for voting.
I want an Andy Griffith police department to be honest. 😎
Right now, it seems like a good sheriff is the best we can hope for.
For example, in NY state, a majority of sheriffs said they simply weren't going to enforce the NY Safe Act (ridiculous gun control law).